Intelligent protection of data

ABSTRACT

A system according to certain aspects improves the process of creating secondary copies of data (e.g., creating backup copies). The system can compute the score of the data (e.g., a computer file storing information) to be backed up, and determine whether the score satisfies one or more threshold criteria before backing up the data. In one example, a change in score indicates a change in the content of the data. The threshold criteria may be that the score be different from the score of the most recently backed up copy of the data.

INCORPORATION BY REFERENCE TO ANY PRIORITY APPLICATIONS

This disclosure is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/506,164, filed on Oct. 3, 2014, titled “INTELLIGENT PROTECTION OF OFF-LINE MAIL DATA,” the entirety of which is incorporated herein by reference. Any and all applications, if any, for which a foreign or domestic priority claim is identified in the Application Data Sheet of the present application are hereby incorporated by reference under 37 CFR 1.57.

BACKGROUND

Businesses worldwide recognize the commercial value of their data and seek reliable, cost-effective ways to protect the information stored on their computer networks while minimizing impact on productivity. Protecting information is often part of a routine process that is performed within an organization. A company might back up critical computing systems such as databases, file servers, web servers, and so on as part of a daily, weekly, or monthly maintenance schedule. The company may similarly protect computing systems used by each of its employees, such as those used by an accounting department, marketing department, engineering department, and so forth.

Given the rapidly expanding volume of data under management, companies also continue to seek innovative techniques for managing data growth, in addition to protecting data. For instance, companies often implement migration techniques for moving data to lower cost storage over time and data reduction techniques for reducing redundant data, pruning lower priority data, etc. Enterprises also increasingly view their stored data as a valuable asset. Along these lines, customers are looking for solutions that not only protect and manage, but also leverage their data. For instance, solutions providing data analysis capabilities, information management, improved data presentation and access features, and the like, are in increasing demand.

SUMMARY

In today's world, electronic communication such as email is becoming the preferred method of sending and receiving information due to its convenience and speed. Thus, more and more data is being generated and stored electronically, and it has become crucial that individual users and companies protect against inadvertent data loss by backing up valuable data in separate storage. For example, in an enterprise environment, the IT department may schedule a periodic backup or other type of secondary copy of the data on the employees' computers. However, creating backup copies for all data at every scheduled backup is not only time-consuming but may also unnecessarily consume processing power and/or network resources, especially if some of the data has not been modified since the most recently performed backup (“last backup”).

Thus, it may be desirable to back up only those portions of the data that have been modified since the last backup. For example, a user's laptop may have many different files stored thereon, and the backup operation for each of those files may involve checking, before backing up the file, whether the file has been modified since the last backup. If the file has been modified since the last backup, the file is backed up. Otherwise, the file is not backed up, since the file would be identical to the previously backed up copy of the file.

However, in some situations, merely checking whether the data has been modified since the last backup may not accurately indicate whether the data should be backed up. For example, certain software applications may cause some data to be rearranged (e.g., to improve performance), or only metadata may be changed, without modifying the information (e.g., mail data) stored therein. In such an example, the data need not be backed up even though the file storing the data may have been modified since the last backup because the content stored therein is still the same as the content stored in the most recently backed up copy of the data. Thus, an improved method of backing up data that reduces the number of unnecessary backups is desired.

A system according to certain aspects of the present disclosure can improve the process of creating secondary copies of data (e.g., creating backup copies). The system can compute the score of the data (e.g., a computer file storing information) to be backed up, and determine whether the score satisfies one or more threshold criteria before backing up the data. In one example, a change in score indicates a change in the content of the data. In such an example, the threshold criteria may be that the score be different from the score of the most recently backed up copy of the data.

For purposes of summarizing the disclosure, certain aspects, advantages, and novel features of the inventions have been described herein. It is to be understood that not necessarily all such advantages may be achieved in accordance with any particular embodiment of the invention. Thus, the invention may be embodied or carried out in a manner that achieves or optimizes one advantage or group of advantages as taught herein without necessarily achieving other advantages as may be taught or suggested herein.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1A is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary information management system.

FIG. 1B is a detailed view of a primary storage device, a secondary storage device, and some examples of primary data and secondary copy data.

FIG. 1C is a block diagram of an exemplary information management system including a storage manager, one or more data agents, and one or more media agents.

FIG. 1D is a block diagram illustrating a scalable information management system.

FIG. 1E illustrates certain secondary copy operations according to an exemplary storage policy.

FIGS. 1F-1H are block diagrams illustrating suitable data structures that may be employed by the information management system.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary system configured to implement improved off-line mail data backups, according to an illustrative embodiment.

FIG. 3 is flow diagram illustrative of one embodiment of backing up off-line mail data.

FIG. 4 is flow diagram illustrative of one embodiment of computing a score based on the data to be backed up.

FIGS. 5A and 5B are illustrative examples of backing up off-line mail data.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Systems and methods are disclosed for improving the process of backing up data files containing multiple data objects and/or associated metadata (e.g., Personal Storage Table [PST] files, other off-line mail files, other mail or calendar data, or the like). Examples of such systems and methods are described in further detail herein, in reference to FIGS. 2-4. Components and functionality for data backup optimization may be configured and/or incorporated into information management systems such as those described herein in FIGS. 1A-1H.

With the increasing importance of protecting and leveraging data, organizations simply cannot afford to take the risk of losing critical data. Moreover, runaway data growth and other modern realities make protecting and managing data an increasingly difficult task. There is therefore a need for efficient, powerful, and user-friendly solutions for protecting and managing data.

Depending on the size of the organization, there are typically many data production sources which are under the purview of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of employees or other individuals. In the past, individual employees were sometimes responsible for managing and protecting their data. A patchwork of hardware and software point solutions has been applied in other cases. These solutions were often provided by different vendors and had limited or no interoperability.

Certain embodiments described herein provide systems and methods capable of addressing these and other shortcomings of prior approaches by implementing unified, organization-wide information management. FIG. 1A shows one such information management system 100, which generally includes combinations of hardware and software configured to protect and manage data and metadata, which is generated and used by the various computing devices in information management system 100. The organization that employs the information management system 100 may be a corporation or other business entity, non-profit organization, educational institution, household, governmental agency, or the like.

Generally, the systems and associated components described herein may be compatible with and/or provide some or all of the functionality of the systems and corresponding components described in one or more of the following U.S. patents and patent application publications assigned to CommVault Systems, Inc., each of which is hereby incorporated in its entirety by reference herein:

-   -   U.S. Pat. No. 7,035,880, entitled “Modular Backup and Retrieval         System Used in Conjunction With a Storage Area Network”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 7,107,298, entitled “System And Method For         Archiving Objects In An Information Store”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 7,246,207, entitled “System and Method for         Dynamically Performing Storage Operations in a Computer         Network”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 7,315,923, entitled “System And Method For         Combining Data Streams In Pipelined Storage Operations In A         Storage Network”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 7,343,453, entitled “Hierarchical Systems and         Methods for Providing a Unified View of Storage Information”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 7,395,282, entitled “Hierarchical Backup and         Retrieval System”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 7,529,782, entitled “System and Methods for         Performing a Snapshot and for Restoring Data”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 7,617,262, entitled “System and Methods for         Monitoring Application Data in a Data Replication System”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 7,747,579, entitled “Metabase for Facilitating         Data Classification”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 8,156,086, entitled “Systems And Methods For         Stored Data Verification”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 8,170,995, entitled “Method and System for Offline         Indexing of Content and Classifying Stored Data”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 8,229,954, entitled “Managing Copies Of Data”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 8,230,195, entitled “System And Method For         Performing Auxiliary Storage Operations”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 8,285,681, entitled “Data Object Store and Server         for a Cloud Storage Environment, Including Data Deduplication         and Data Management Across Multiple Cloud Storage Sites”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 8,307,177, entitled “Systems And Methods For         Management Of Virtualization Data”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 8,364,652, entitled “Content-Aligned, Block-Based         Deduplication”;     -   U.S. Pat. No. 8,578,120, entitled “Block-Level Single         Instancing”;     -   U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2006/0224846, entitled “System and Method to         Support Single Instance Storage Operations”;     -   U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2009/0319534, entitled “Application-Aware and         Remote Single Instance Data Management”;     -   U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2012/0150818, entitled “Client-Side         Repository in a Networked Deduplicated Storage System”; and     -   U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2012/0150826, entitled “Distributed         Deduplicated Storage System”.

The information management system 100 can include a variety of different computing devices. For instance, as will be described in greater detail herein, the information management system 100 can include one or more client computing devices 102 and secondary storage computing devices 106.

Computing devices can include, without limitation, one or more: workstations, personal computers, desktop computers, or other types of generally fixed computing systems such as mainframe computers and minicomputers. Other computing devices can include mobile or portable computing devices, such as one or more laptops, tablet computers, personal data assistants, mobile phones (such as smartphones), and other mobile or portable computing devices such as embedded computers, set top boxes, vehicle-mounted devices, wearable computers, etc. Computing devices can include servers, such as mail servers, file servers, database servers, and web servers.

In some cases, a computing device includes virtualized and/or cloud computing resources. For instance, one or more virtual machines may be provided to the organization by a third-party cloud service vendor. Or, in some embodiments, computing devices can include one or more virtual machine(s) running on a physical host computing device (or “host machine”) operated by the organization. As one example, the organization may use one virtual machine as a database server and another virtual machine as a mail server, both virtual machines operating on the same host machine.

A virtual machine includes an operating system and associated virtual resources, and is hosted simultaneously with another operating system on a physical host computer (or host machine). A hypervisor (typically software, and also known in the art as a virtual machine monitor or a virtual machine manager or “VMM”) sits between the virtual machine and the hardware of the physical host machine. One example of hypervisor as virtualization software is ESX Server, by VMware, Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif.; other examples include Microsoft Virtual Server and Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V, both by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., and Sun xVM by Oracle America Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif. In some embodiments, the hypervisor may be firmware or hardware or a combination of software and/or firmware and/or hardware.

The hypervisor provides to each virtual operating system virtual resources, such as a virtual processor, virtual memory, a virtual network device, and a virtual disk. Each virtual machine has one or more virtual disks. The hypervisor typically stores the data of virtual disks in files on the file system of the physical host machine, called virtual machine disk files (in the case of VMware virtual servers) or virtual hard disk image files (in the case of Microsoft virtual servers). For example, VMware's ESX Server provides the Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) for the storage of virtual machine disk files. A virtual machine reads data from and writes data to its virtual disk much the same way that an actual physical machine reads data from and writes data to an actual disk.

Examples of techniques for implementing information management techniques in a cloud computing environment are described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,285,681, which is incorporated by reference herein. Examples of techniques for implementing information management techniques in a virtualized computing environment are described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,307,177, also incorporated by reference herein.

The information management system 100 can also include a variety of storage devices, including primary storage devices 104 and secondary storage devices 108, for example. Storage devices can generally be of any suitable type including, without limitation, disk drives, hard-disk arrays, semiconductor memory (e.g., solid state storage devices), network attached storage (NAS) devices, tape libraries or other magnetic, non-tape storage devices, optical media storage devices, DNA/RNA-based memory technology, combinations of the same, and the like. In some embodiments, storage devices can form part of a distributed file system. In some cases, storage devices are provided in a cloud (e.g., a private cloud or one operated by a third-party vendor). A storage device in some cases comprises a disk array or portion thereof.

The illustrated information management system 100 includes one or more client computing device 102 having at least one application 110 executing thereon, and one or more primary storage devices 104 storing primary data 112. The client computing device(s) 102 and the primary storage devices 104 may generally be referred to in some cases as a primary storage subsystem 117. A computing device in an information management system 100 that has a data agent 142 installed and operating on it is generally referred to as a client computing device 102 (or, in the context of a component of the information management system 100 simply as a “client”).

Depending on the context, the term “information management system” can refer to generally all of the illustrated hardware and software components. Or, in other instances, the term may refer to only a subset of the illustrated components.

For instance, in some cases, the information management system 100 generally refers to a combination of specialized components used to protect, move, manage, manipulate, analyze, and/or process data and metadata generated by the client computing devices 102. However, the information management system 100 in some cases does not include the underlying components that generate and/or store the primary data 112, such as the client computing devices 102 themselves, the applications 110 and operating system operating on the client computing devices 102, and the primary storage devices 104. As an example, “information management system” may sometimes refer to one or more of the following components and corresponding data structures: storage managers, data agents, and media agents. These components will be described in further detail below.

Client Computing Devices

There are typically a variety of sources in an organization that produce data to be protected and managed. As just one illustrative example, in a corporate environment such data sources can be employee workstations and company servers such as a mail server, a web server, a database server, a transaction server, or the like. In the information management system 100, the data generation sources include the one or more client computing devices 102.

The client computing devices 102 may include any of the types of computing devices described above, without limitation, and in some cases the client computing devices 102 are associated with one or more users and/or corresponding user accounts, of employees or other individuals.

The information management system 100 generally addresses and handles the data management and protection needs for the data generated by the client computing devices 102. However, the use of this term does not imply that the client computing devices 102 cannot be “servers” in other respects. For instance, a particular client computing device 102 may act as a server with respect to other devices, such as other client computing devices 102. As just a few examples, the client computing devices 102 can include mail servers, file servers, database servers, and web servers.

Each client computing device 102 may have one or more applications 110 (e.g., software applications) executing thereon which generate and manipulate the data that is to be protected from loss and managed. The applications 110 generally facilitate the operations of an organization (or multiple affiliated organizations), and can include, without limitation, mail server applications (e.g., Microsoft Exchange Server), file server applications, mail client applications (e.g., Microsoft Exchange Client), database applications (e.g., SQL, Oracle, SAP, Lotus Notes Database), word processing applications (e.g., Microsoft Word), spreadsheet applications, financial applications, presentation applications, graphics and/or video applications, browser applications, mobile applications, entertainment applications, and so on.

The client computing devices 102 can have at least one operating system (e.g., Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, IBM z/OS, Linux, other Unix-based operating systems, etc.) installed thereon, which may support or host one or more file systems and other applications 110.

The client computing devices 102 and other components in information management system 100 can be connected to one another via one or more communication pathways 114. For example, a first communication pathway 114 may connect (or communicatively couple) client computing device 102 and secondary storage computing device 106; a second communication pathway 114 may connect storage manager 140 and client computing device 102; and a third communication pathway 114 may connect storage manager 140 and secondary storage computing device 106, etc. (see, e.g., FIG. 1A and FIG. 1C). The communication pathways 114 can include one or more networks or other connection types including one or more of the following, without limitation: the Internet, a wide area network (WAN), a local area network (LAN), a Storage Area Network (SAN), a Fibre Channel connection, a Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) connection, a virtual private network (VPN), a token ring or TCP/IP based network, an intranet network, a point-to-point link, a cellular network, a wireless data transmission system, a two-way cable system, an interactive kiosk network, a satellite network, a broadband network, a baseband network, a neural network, a mesh network, an ad hoc network, other appropriate wired, wireless, or partially wired/wireless computer or telecommunications networks, combinations of the same or the like. The communication pathways 114 in some cases may also include application programming interfaces (APIs) including, e.g., cloud service provider APIs, virtual machine management APIs, and hosted service provider APIs. The underlying infrastructure of communication paths 114 may be wired and/or wireless, analog and/or digital, or any combination thereof; and the facilities used may be private, public, third-party provided, or any combination thereof, without limitation.

Primary Data and Exemplary Primary Storage Devices

Primary data 112 according to some embodiments is production data or other “live” data generated by the operating system and/or applications 110 operating on a client computing device 102. The primary data 112 is generally stored on the primary storage device(s) 104 and is organized via a file system supported by the client computing device 102. For instance, the client computing device(s) 102 and corresponding applications 110 may create, access, modify, write, delete, and otherwise use primary data 112. In some cases, some or all of the primary data 112 can be stored in cloud storage resources (e.g., primary storage device 104 may be a cloud-based resource).

Primary data 112 is generally in the native format of the source application 110. According to certain aspects, primary data 112 is an initial or first (e.g., created before any other copies or before at least one other copy) stored copy of data generated by the source application 110. Primary data 112 in some cases is created substantially directly from data generated by the corresponding source applications 110.

The primary storage devices 104 storing the primary data 112 may be relatively fast and/or expensive technology (e.g., a disk drive, a hard-disk array, solid state memory, etc.). In addition, primary data 112 may be highly changeable and/or may be intended for relatively short term retention (e.g., hours, days, or weeks).

According to some embodiments, the client computing device 102 can access primary data 112 from the primary storage device 104 by making conventional file system calls via the operating system. Primary data 112 may include structured data (e.g., database files), unstructured data (e.g., documents), and/or semi-structured data. Some specific examples are described below with respect to FIG. 1B.

It can be useful in performing certain tasks to organize the primary data 112 into units of different granularities. In general, primary data 112 can include files, directories, file system volumes, data blocks, extents, or any other hierarchies or organizations of data objects. As used herein, a “data object” can refer to both (1) any file that is currently addressable by a file system or that was previously addressable by the file system (e.g., an archive file) and (2) a subset of such a file (e.g., a data block).

As will be described in further detail, it can also be useful in performing certain functions of the information management system 100 to access and modify metadata within the primary data 112. Metadata generally includes information about data objects or characteristics associated with the data objects. For simplicity herein, it is to be understood that, unless expressly stated otherwise, any reference to primary data 112 generally also includes its associated metadata, but references to the metadata do not include the primary data.

Metadata can include, without limitation, one or more of the following: the data owner (e.g., the client or user that generates the data), the last modified time (e.g., the time of the most recent modification of the data object), a data object name (e.g., a file name), a data object size (e.g., a number of bytes of data), information about the content (e.g., an indication as to the existence of a particular search term), user-supplied tags, to/from information for email (e.g., an email sender, recipient, etc.), creation date, file type (e.g., format or application type), last accessed time, application type (e.g., type of application that generated the data object), location/network (e.g., a current, past or future location of the data object and network pathways to/from the data object), geographic location (e.g., GPS coordinates), frequency of change (e.g., a period in which the data object is modified), business unit (e.g., a group or department that generates, manages or is otherwise associated with the data object), aging information (e.g., a schedule, such as a time period, in which the data object is migrated to secondary or long term storage), boot sectors, partition layouts, file location within a file folder directory structure, user permissions, owners, groups, access control lists [ACLs]), system metadata (e.g., registry information), combinations of the same or other similar information related to the data object.

In addition to metadata generated by or related to file systems and operating systems, some of the applications 110 and/or other components of the information management system 100 maintain indices of metadata for data objects, e.g., metadata associated with individual email messages. Thus, each data object may be associated with corresponding metadata. The use of metadata to perform classification and other functions is described in greater detail below.

Each of the client computing devices 102 are generally associated with and/or in communication with one or more of the primary storage devices 104 storing corresponding primary data 112. A client computing device 102 may be considered to be “associated with” or “in communication with” a primary storage device 104 if it is capable of one or more of: routing and/or storing data (e.g., primary data 112) to the particular primary storage device 104, coordinating the routing and/or storing of data to the particular primary storage device 104, retrieving data from the particular primary storage device 104, coordinating the retrieval of data from the particular primary storage device 104, and modifying and/or deleting data retrieved from the particular primary storage device 104.

The primary storage devices 104 can include any of the different types of storage devices described above, or some other kind of suitable storage device. The primary storage devices 104 may have relatively fast I/O times and/or are relatively expensive in comparison to the secondary storage devices 108. For example, the information management system 100 may generally regularly access data and metadata stored on primary storage devices 104, whereas data and metadata stored on the secondary storage devices 108 is accessed relatively less frequently.

Primary storage device 104 may be dedicated or shared. In some cases, each primary storage device 104 is dedicated to an associated client computing device 102. For instance, a primary storage device 104 in one embodiment is a local disk drive of a corresponding client computing device 102. In other cases, one or more primary storage devices 104 can be shared by multiple client computing devices 102, e.g., via a network such as in a cloud storage implementation. As one example, a primary storage device 104 can be a disk array shared by a group of client computing devices 102, such as one of the following types of disk arrays: EMC Clariion, EMC Symmetrix, EMC Celerra, Dell EqualLogic, IBM XIV, NetApp FAS, HP EVA, and HP 3PAR.

The information management system 100 may also include hosted services (not shown), which may be hosted in some cases by an entity other than the organization that employs the other components of the information management system 100. For instance, the hosted services may be provided by various online service providers to the organization. Such service providers can provide services including social networking services, hosted email services, or hosted productivity applications or other hosted applications). Hosted services may include software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), application service providers (ASPs), cloud services, or other mechanisms for delivering functionality via a network. As it provides services to users, each hosted service may generate additional data and metadata under management of the information management system 100, e.g., as primary data 112. In some cases, the hosted services may be accessed using one of the applications 110. As an example, a hosted mail service may be accessed via browser running on a client computing device 102. The hosted services may be implemented in a variety of computing environments. In some cases, they are implemented in an environment having a similar arrangement to the information management system 100, where various physical and logical components are distributed over a network.

Secondary Copies and Exemplary Secondary Storage Devices

The primary data 112 stored on the primary storage devices 104 may be compromised in some cases, such as when an employee deliberately or accidentally deletes or overwrites primary data 112 during their normal course of work. Or the primary storage devices 104 can be damaged, lost, or otherwise corrupted. For recovery and/or regulatory compliance purposes, it is therefore useful to generate copies of the primary data 112. Accordingly, the information management system 100 includes one or more secondary storage computing devices 106 and one or more secondary storage devices 108 configured to create and store one or more secondary copies 116 of the primary data 112 and associated metadata. The secondary storage computing devices 106 and the secondary storage devices 108 may sometimes be referred to as a secondary storage subsystem 118.

Creation of secondary copies 116 can help in search and analysis efforts and meet other information management goals, such as: restoring data and/or metadata if an original version (e.g., of primary data 112) is lost (e.g., by deletion, corruption, or disaster); allowing point-in-time recovery; complying with regulatory data retention and electronic discovery (e-discovery) requirements; reducing utilized storage capacity; facilitating organization and search of data; improving user access to data files across multiple computing devices and/or hosted services; and implementing data retention policies.

The client computing devices 102 access or receive primary data 112 and communicate the data, e.g., over one or more communication pathways 114, for storage in the secondary storage device(s) 108.

A secondary copy 116 can comprise a separate stored copy of application data that is derived from one or more earlier-created, stored copies (e.g., derived from primary data 112 or another secondary copy 116). Secondary copies 116 can include point-in-time data, and may be intended for relatively long-term retention (e.g., weeks, months or years), before some or all of the data is moved to other storage or is discarded.

In some cases, a secondary copy 116 is a copy of application data created and stored subsequent to at least one other stored instance (e.g., subsequent to corresponding primary data 112 or to another secondary copy 116), in a different storage device than at least one previous stored copy, and/or remotely from at least one previous stored copy. In some other cases, secondary copies can be stored in the same storage device as primary data 112 and/or other previously stored copies. For example, in one embodiment a disk array capable of performing hardware snapshots stores primary data 112 and creates and stores hardware snapshots of the primary data 112 as secondary copies 116. Secondary copies 116 may be stored in relatively slow and/or low cost storage (e.g., magnetic tape). A secondary copy 116 may be stored in a backup or archive format, or in some other format different than the native source application format or other primary data format.

In some cases, secondary copies 116 are indexed so users can browse and restore at another point in time. After creation of a secondary copy 116 representative of certain primary data 112, a pointer or other location indicia (e.g., a stub) may be placed in primary data 112, or be otherwise associated with primary data 112 to indicate the current location on the secondary storage device(s) 108 of secondary copy 116.

Since an instance of a data object or metadata in primary data 112 may change over time as it is modified by an application 110 (or hosted service or the operating system), the information management system 100 may create and manage multiple secondary copies 116 of a particular data object or metadata, each representing the state of the data object in primary data 112 at a particular point in time. Moreover, since an instance of a data object in primary data 112 may eventually be deleted from the primary storage device 104 and the file system, the information management system 100 may continue to manage point-in-time representations of that data object, even though the instance in primary data 112 no longer exists.

For virtualized computing devices the operating system and other applications 110 of the client computing device(s) 102 may execute within or under the management of virtualization software (e.g., a VMM), and the primary storage device(s) 104 may comprise a virtual disk created on a physical storage device. The information management system 100 may create secondary copies 116 of the files or other data objects in a virtual disk file and/or secondary copies 116 of the entire virtual disk file itself (e.g., of an entire .vmdk file).

Secondary copies 116 may be distinguished from corresponding primary data 112 in a variety of ways, some of which will now be described. First, as discussed, secondary copies 116 can be stored in a different format (e.g., backup, archive, or other non-native format) than primary data 112. For this or other reasons, secondary copies 116 may not be directly useable by the applications 110 of the client computing device 102, e.g., via standard system calls or otherwise without modification, processing, or other intervention by the information management system 100.

Secondary copies 116 are also in some embodiments stored on a secondary storage device 108 that is inaccessible to the applications 110 running on the client computing devices 102 (and/or hosted services). Some secondary copies 116 may be “offline copies,” in that they are not readily available (e.g., not mounted to tape or disk). Offline copies can include copies of data that the information management system 100 can access without human intervention (e.g., tapes within an automated tape library, but not yet mounted in a drive), and copies that the information management system 100 can access only with at least some human intervention (e.g., tapes located at an offsite storage site).

The Use of Intermediate Devices For Creating Secondary Copies

Creating secondary copies can be a challenging task. For instance, there can be hundreds or thousands of client computing devices 102 continually generating large volumes of primary data 112 to be protected. Also, there can be significant overhead involved in the creation of secondary copies 116. Moreover, secondary storage devices 108 may be special purpose components, and interacting with them can require specialized intelligence.

In some cases, the client computing devices 102 interact directly with the secondary storage device 108 to create the secondary copies 116. However, in view of the factors described above, this approach can negatively impact the ability of the client computing devices 102 to serve the applications 110 and produce primary data 112. Further, the client computing devices 102 may not be optimized for interaction with the secondary storage devices 108.

Thus, in some embodiments, the information management system 100 includes one or more software and/or hardware components which generally act as intermediaries between the client computing devices 102 and the secondary storage devices 108. In addition to off-loading certain responsibilities from the client computing devices 102, these intermediate components can provide other benefits. For instance, as discussed further below with respect to FIG. 1D, distributing some of the work involved in creating secondary copies 116 can enhance scalability.

The intermediate components can include one or more secondary storage computing devices 106 as shown in FIG. 1A and/or one or more media agents, which can be software modules operating on corresponding secondary storage computing devices 106 (or other appropriate computing devices). Media agents are discussed below (e.g., with respect to FIGS. 1C-1E).

The secondary storage computing device(s) 106 can comprise any of the computing devices described above, without limitation. In some cases, the secondary storage computing device(s) 106 include specialized hardware and/or software componentry for interacting with the secondary storage devices 108.

To create a secondary copy 116 involving the copying of data from the primary storage subsystem 117 to the secondary storage subsystem 118, the client computing device 102 in some embodiments communicates the primary data 112 to be copied (or a processed version thereof) to the designated secondary storage computing device 106, via the communication pathway 114. The secondary storage computing device 106 in turn conveys the received data (or a processed version thereof) to the secondary storage device 108. In some such configurations, the communication pathway 114 between the client computing device 102 and the secondary storage computing device 106 comprises a portion of a LAN, WAN or SAN. In other cases, at least some client computing devices 102 communicate directly with the secondary storage devices 108 (e.g., via Fibre Channel or SCSI connections). In some other cases, one or more secondary copies 116 are created from existing secondary copies, such as in the case of an auxiliary copy operation, described in greater detail below.

Exemplary Primary Data and an Exemplary Secondary Copy

FIG. 1B is a detailed view showing some specific examples of primary data stored on the primary storage device(s) 104 and secondary copy data stored on the secondary storage device(s) 108, with other components in the system removed for the purposes of illustration. Stored on the primary storage device(s) 104 are primary data objects including word processing documents 119A-B, spreadsheets 120, presentation documents 122, video files 124, image files 126, email mailboxes 128 (and corresponding email messages 129A-C), html/xml or other types of markup language files 130, databases 132 and corresponding tables or other data structures 133A-133C).

Some or all primary data objects are associated with corresponding metadata (e.g., “Meta1-11”), which may include file system metadata and/or application specific metadata. Stored on the secondary storage device(s) 108 are secondary copy data objects 134A-C which may include copies of or otherwise represent corresponding primary data objects and metadata.

As shown, the secondary copy data objects 134A-C can individually represent more than one primary data object. For example, secondary copy data object 134A represents three separate primary data objects 133C, 122, and 129C (represented as 133C′, 122′, and 129C′, respectively, and accompanied by the corresponding metadata Meta11, Meta3, and Meta8, respectively). Moreover, as indicated by the prime mark (′), a secondary copy object may store a representation of a primary data object and/or metadata differently than the original format, e.g., in a compressed, encrypted, deduplicated, or other modified format. Likewise, secondary data object 134B represents primary data objects 120, 133B, and 119A as 120′, 133B′, and 119A′, respectively and accompanied by corresponding metadata Meta2, Meta10, and Meta1, respectively. Also, secondary data object 134C represents primary data objects 133A, 119B, and 129A as 133A′, 119B′, and 129A′, respectively, accompanied by corresponding metadata Meta9, Meta5, and Meta6, respectively.

Exemplary Information Management System Architecture

The information management system 100 can incorporate a variety of different hardware and software components, which can in turn be organized with respect to one another in many different configurations, depending on the embodiment. There are critical design choices involved in specifying the functional responsibilities of the components and the role of each component in the information management system 100. For instance, as will be discussed, such design choices can impact performance as well as the adaptability of the information management system 100 to data growth or other changing circumstances.

FIG. 1C shows an information management system 100 designed according to these considerations and which includes: storage manager 140, a centralized storage and/or information manager that is configured to perform certain control functions, one or more data agents 142 executing on the client computing device(s) 102 configured to process primary data 112, and one or more media agents 144 executing on the one or more secondary storage computing devices 106 for performing tasks involving the secondary storage devices 108. While distributing functionality amongst multiple computing devices can have certain advantages, in other contexts it can be beneficial to consolidate functionality on the same computing device. As such, in various other embodiments, one or more of the components shown in FIG. 1C as being implemented on separate computing devices are implemented on the same computing device. In one configuration, a storage manager 140, one or more data agents 142, and one or more media agents 144 are all implemented on the same computing device. In another embodiment, one or more data agents 142 and one or more media agents 144 are implemented on the same computing device, while the storage manager 140 is implemented on a separate computing device, etc. without limitation.

Storage Manager

As noted, the number of components in the information management system 100 and the amount of data under management can be quite large. Managing the components and data is therefore a significant task, and a task that can grow in an often unpredictable fashion as the quantity of components and data scale to meet the needs of the organization. For these and other reasons, according to certain embodiments, responsibility for controlling the information management system 100, or at least a significant portion of that responsibility, is allocated to the storage manager 140. By distributing control functionality in this manner, the storage manager 140 can be adapted independently according to changing circumstances. Moreover, a computing device for hosting the storage manager 140 can be selected to best suit the functions of the storage manager 140. These and other advantages are described in further detail below with respect to FIG. 1D.

The storage manager 140 may be a software module or other application, which, in some embodiments operates in conjunction with one or more associated data structures, e.g., a dedicated database (e.g., management database 146). In some embodiments, storage manager 140 is a computing device comprising circuitry for executing computer instructions and performs the functions described herein. The storage manager generally initiates, performs, coordinates and/or controls storage and other information management operations performed by the information management system 100, e.g., to protect and control the primary data 112 and secondary copies 116 of data and metadata. In general, storage manager 100 may be said to manage information management system 100, which includes managing the constituent components, e.g., data agents and media agents, etc.

As shown by the dashed arrowed lines 114 in FIG. 1C, the storage manager 140 may communicate with and/or control some or all elements of the information management system 100, such as the data agents 142 and media agents 144. Thus, in certain embodiments, control information originates from the storage manager 140 and status reporting is transmitted to storage manager 140 by the various managed components, whereas payload data and payload metadata is generally communicated between the data agents 142 and the media agents 144 (or otherwise between the client computing device(s) 102 and the secondary storage computing device(s) 106), e.g., at the direction of and under the management of the storage manager 140. Control information can generally include parameters and instructions for carrying out information management operations, such as, without limitation, instructions to perform a task associated with an operation, timing information specifying when to initiate a task associated with an operation, data path information specifying what components to communicate with or access in carrying out an operation, and the like. Payload data, on the other hand, can include the actual data involved in the storage operation, such as content data written to a secondary storage device 108 in a secondary copy operation. Payload metadata can include any of the types of metadata described herein, and may be written to a storage device along with the payload content data (e.g., in the form of a header).

In other embodiments, some information management operations are controlled by other components in the information management system 100 (e.g., the media agent(s) 144 or data agent(s) 142), instead of or in combination with the storage manager 140.

According to certain embodiments, the storage manager 140 provides one or more of the following functions:

-   -   initiating execution of secondary copy operations;     -   managing secondary storage devices 108 and inventory/capacity of         the same;     -   reporting, searching, and/or classification of data in the         information management system 100;     -   allocating secondary storage devices 108 for secondary storage         operations;     -   monitoring completion of and providing status reporting related         to secondary storage operations;     -   tracking age information relating to secondary copies 116,         secondary storage devices 108, and comparing the age information         against retention guidelines;     -   tracking movement of data within the information management         system 100;     -   tracking logical associations between components in the         information management system 100;     -   protecting metadata associated with the information management         system 100; and     -   implementing operations management functionality.

The storage manager 140 may maintain a database 146 (or “storage manager database 146” or “management database 146”) of management-related data and information management policies 148. The database 146 may include a management index 150 (or “index 150”) or other data structure that stores logical associations between components of the system, user preferences and/or profiles (e.g., preferences regarding encryption, compression, or deduplication of primary or secondary copy data, preferences regarding the scheduling, type, or other aspects of primary or secondary copy or other operations, mappings of particular information management users or user accounts to certain computing devices or other components, etc.), management tasks, media containerization, or other useful data. For example, the storage manager 140 may use the index 150 to track logical associations between media agents 144 and secondary storage devices 108 and/or movement of data from primary storage devices 104 to secondary storage devices 108. For instance, the index 150 may store data associating a client computing device 102 with a particular media agent 144 and/or secondary storage device 108, as specified in an information management policy 148 (e.g., a storage policy, which is defined in more detail below).

Administrators and other people may be able to configure and initiate certain information management operations on an individual basis. But while this may be acceptable for some recovery operations or other relatively less frequent tasks, it is often not workable for implementing on-going organization-wide data protection and management. Thus, the information management system 100 may utilize information management policies 148 for specifying and executing information management operations (e.g., on an automated basis). Generally, an information management policy 148 can include a data structure or other information source that specifies a set of parameters (e.g., criteria and rules) associated with storage or other information management operations.

The storage manager database 146 may maintain the information management policies 148 and associated data, although the information management policies 148 can be stored in any appropriate location. For instance, an information management policy 148 such as a storage policy may be stored as metadata in a media agent database 152 or in a secondary storage device 108 (e.g., as an archive copy) for use in restore operations or other information management operations, depending on the embodiment. Information management policies 148 are described further below.

According to certain embodiments, the storage manager database 146 comprises a relational database (e.g., an SQL database) for tracking metadata, such as metadata associated with secondary copy operations (e.g., what client computing devices 102 and corresponding data were protected). This and other metadata may additionally be stored in other locations, such as at the secondary storage computing devices 106 or on the secondary storage devices 108, allowing data recovery without the use of the storage manager 140 in some cases.

As shown, the storage manager 140 may include a jobs agent 156, a user interface 158, and a management agent 154, all of which may be implemented as interconnected software modules or application programs.

The jobs agent 156 in some embodiments initiates, controls, and/or monitors the status of some or all storage or other information management operations previously performed, currently being performed, or scheduled to be performed by the information management system 100. For instance, the jobs agent 156 may access information management policies 148 to determine when and how to initiate and control secondary copy and other information management operations, as will be discussed further.

The user interface 158 may include information processing and display software, such as a graphical user interface (“GUI”), an application program interface (“API”), or other interactive interface(s) through which users and system processes can retrieve information about the status of information management operations (e.g., storage operations) or issue instructions to the information management system 100 and its constituent components. Via the user interface 158, users may optionally issue instructions to the components in the information management system 100 regarding performance of storage and recovery operations. For example, a user may modify a schedule concerning the number of pending secondary copy operations. As another example, a user may employ the GUI to view the status of pending storage operations or to monitor the status of certain components in the information management system 100 (e.g., the amount of capacity left in a storage device).

An “information management cell” (or “storage operation cell” or “cell”) may generally include a logical and/or physical grouping of a combination of hardware and software components associated with performing information management operations on electronic data, typically one storage manager 140 and at least one client computing device 102 (comprising data agent(s) 142) and at least one media agent 144. For instance, the components shown in FIG. 1C may together form an information management cell. Multiple cells may be organized hierarchically. With this configuration, cells may inherit properties from hierarchically superior cells or be controlled by other cells in the hierarchy (automatically or otherwise). Alternatively, in some embodiments, cells may inherit or otherwise be associated with information management policies, preferences, information management metrics, or other properties or characteristics according to their relative position in a hierarchy of cells. Cells may also be delineated and/or organized hierarchically according to function, geography, architectural considerations, or other factors useful or desirable in performing information management operations. A first cell may represent a geographic segment of an enterprise, such as a Chicago office, and a second cell may represent a different geographic segment, such as a New York office. Other cells may represent departments within a particular office. Where delineated by function, a first cell may perform one or more first types of information management operations (e.g., one or more first types of secondary or other copies), and a second cell may perform one or more second types of information management operations (e.g., one or more second types of secondary or other copies).

The storage manager 140 may also track information that permits it to select, designate, or otherwise identify content indices, deduplication databases, or similar databases or resources or data sets within its information management cell (or another cell) to be searched in response to certain queries. Such queries may be entered by the user via interaction with the user interface 158. In general, the management agent 154 allows multiple information management cells to communicate with one another. For example, the information management system 100 in some cases may be one information management cell of a network of multiple cells adjacent to one another or otherwise logically related in a WAN or LAN. With this arrangement, the cells may be connected to one another through respective management agents 154.

For instance, the management agent 154 can provide the storage manager 140 with the ability to communicate with other components within the information management system 100 (and/or other cells within a larger information management system) via network protocols and application programming interfaces (“APIs”) including, e.g., HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, REST, virtualization software APIs, cloud service provider APIs, and hosted service provider APIs. Inter-cell communication and hierarchy is described in greater detail in e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,747,579 and 7,343,453, which are incorporated by reference herein.

Data Agents

As discussed, a variety of different types of applications 110 can operate on a given client computing device 102, including operating systems, database applications, e-mail applications, and virtual machines, just to name a few. And, as part of the process of creating and restoring secondary copies 116, the client computing devices 102 may be tasked with processing and preparing the primary data 112 from these various different applications 110. Moreover, the nature of the processing/preparation can differ across clients and application types, e.g., due to inherent structural and formatting differences among applications 110.

The one or more data agent(s) 142 are therefore advantageously configured in some embodiments to assist in the performance of information management operations based on the type of data that is being protected, at a client-specific and/or application-specific level.

The data agent 142 may be a software module or component that is generally responsible for managing, initiating, or otherwise assisting in the performance of information management operations in information management system 100, generally as directed by storage manager 140. For instance, the data agent 142 may take part in performing data storage operations such as the copying, archiving, migrating, and/or replicating of primary data 112 stored in the primary storage device(s) 104. The data agent 142 may receive control information from the storage manager 140, such as commands to transfer copies of data objects, metadata, and other payload data to the media agents 144.

In some embodiments, a data agent 142 may be distributed between the client computing device 102 and storage manager 140 (and any other intermediate components) or may be deployed from a remote location or its functions approximated by a remote process that performs some or all of the functions of data agent 142. In addition, a data agent 142 may perform some functions provided by a media agent 144, or may perform other functions such as encryption and deduplication.

As indicated, each data agent 142 may be specialized for a particular application 110, and the system can employ multiple application-specific data agents 142, each of which may perform information management operations (e.g., perform backup, migration, and data recovery) associated with a different application 110. For instance, different individual data agents 142 may be designed to handle Microsoft Exchange data, Lotus Notes data, Microsoft Windows file system data, Microsoft Active Directory Objects data, SQL Server data, SharePoint data, Oracle database data, SAP database data, virtual machines and/or associated data, and other types of data.

A file system data agent, for example, may handle data files and/or other file system information. If a client computing device 102 has two or more types of data, a specialized data agent 142 may be used for each data type to copy, archive, migrate, and restore the client computing device 102 data. For example, to backup, migrate, and/or restore all of the data on a Microsoft Exchange server, the client computing device 102 may use a Microsoft Exchange Mailbox data agent 142 to back up the Exchange mailboxes, a Microsoft Exchange Database data agent 142 to back up the Exchange databases, a Microsoft Exchange Public Folder data agent 142 to back up the Exchange Public Folders, and a Microsoft Windows File System data agent 142 to back up the file system of the client computing device 102. In such embodiments, these specialized data agents 142 may be treated as four separate data agents 142 even though they operate on the same client computing device 102.

Other embodiments may employ one or more generic data agents 142 that can handle and process data from two or more different applications 110, or that can handle and process multiple data types, instead of or in addition to using specialized data agents 142. For example, one generic data agent 142 may be used to back up, migrate and restore Microsoft Exchange Mailbox data and Microsoft Exchange Database data while another generic data agent may handle Microsoft Exchange Public Folder data and Microsoft Windows File System data.

Each data agent 142 may be configured to access data and/or metadata stored in the primary storage device(s) 104 associated with the data agent 142 and process the data as appropriate. For example, during a secondary copy operation, the data agent 142 may arrange or assemble the data and metadata into one or more files having a certain format (e.g., a particular backup or archive format) before transferring the file(s) to a media agent 144 or other component. The file(s) may include a list of files or other metadata. Each data agent 142 can also assist in restoring data or metadata to primary storage devices 104 from a secondary copy 116. For instance, the data agent 142 may operate in conjunction with the storage manager 140 and one or more of the media agents 144 to restore data from secondary storage device(s) 108.

Media Agents

As indicated above with respect to FIG. 1A, off-loading certain responsibilities from the client computing devices 102 to intermediate components such as the media agent(s) 144 can provide a number of benefits including improved client computing device 102 operation, faster secondary copy operation performance, and enhanced scalability. In one specific example which will be discussed below in further detail, the media agent 144 can act as a local cache of copied data and/or metadata that it has stored to the secondary storage device(s) 108, providing improved restore capabilities.

Generally speaking, a media agent 144 may be implemented as a software module that manages, coordinates, and facilitates the transmission of data, as directed by the storage manager 140, between a client computing device 102 and one or more secondary storage devices 108. Whereas the storage manager 140 controls the operation of the information management system 100, the media agent 144 generally provides a portal to secondary storage devices 108. For instance, other components in the system interact with the media agents 144 to gain access to data stored on the secondary storage devices 108, whether it be for the purposes of reading, writing, modifying, or deleting data. Moreover, as will be described further, media agents 144 can generate and store information relating to characteristics of the stored data and/or metadata, or can generate and store other types of information that generally provides insight into the contents of the secondary storage devices 108.

Media agents 144 can comprise separate nodes in the information management system 100 (e.g., nodes that are separate from the client computing devices 102, storage manager 140, and/or secondary storage devices 108). In general, a node within the information management system 100 can be a logically and/or physically separate component, and in some cases is a component that is individually addressable or otherwise identifiable. In addition, each media agent 144 may operate on a dedicated secondary storage computing device 106 in some cases, while in other embodiments a plurality of media agents 144 operate on the same secondary storage computing device 106.

A media agent 144 (and corresponding media agent database 152) may be considered to be “associated with” a particular secondary storage device 108 if that media agent 144 is capable of one or more of: routing and/or storing data to the particular secondary storage device 108, coordinating the routing and/or storing of data to the particular secondary storage device 108, retrieving data from the particular secondary storage device 108, coordinating the retrieval of data from a particular secondary storage device 108, and modifying and/or deleting data retrieved from the particular secondary storage device 108.

While media agent(s) 144 are generally associated with one or more secondary storage devices 108, one or more media agents 144 in certain embodiments are physically separate from the secondary storage devices 108. For instance, the media agents 144 may operate on secondary storage computing devices 106 having different housings or packages than the secondary storage devices 108. In one example, a media agent 144 operates on a first server computer and is in communication with a secondary storage device(s) 108 operating in a separate, rack-mounted RAID-based system.

Where the information management system 100 includes multiple media agents 144 (see, e.g., FIG. 1D), a first media agent 144 may provide failover functionality for a second, failed media agent 144. In addition, media agents 144 can be dynamically selected for storage operations to provide load balancing. Failover and load balancing are described in greater detail below.

In operation, a media agent 144 associated with a particular secondary storage device 108 may instruct the secondary storage device 108 to perform an information management operation. For instance, a media agent 144 may instruct a tape library to use a robotic arm or other retrieval means to load or eject a certain storage media, and to subsequently archive, migrate, or retrieve data to or from that media, e.g., for the purpose of restoring the data to a client computing device 102. As another example, a secondary storage device 108 may include an array of hard disk drives or solid state drives organized in a RAID configuration, and the media agent 144 may forward a logical unit number (LUN) and other appropriate information to the array, which uses the received information to execute the desired storage operation. The media agent 144 may communicate with a secondary storage device 108 via a suitable communications link, such as a SCSI or Fiber Channel link.

As shown, each media agent 144 may maintain an associated media agent database 152. The media agent database 152 may be stored in a disk or other storage device (not shown) that is local to the secondary storage computing device 106 on which the media agent 144 operates. In other cases, the media agent database 152 is stored remotely from the secondary storage computing device 106.

The media agent database 152 can include, among other things, an index 153 (see, e.g., FIG. 1C), which comprises information generated during secondary copy operations and other storage or information management operations. The index 153 provides a media agent 144 or other component with a fast and efficient mechanism for locating secondary copies 116 or other data stored in the secondary storage devices 108. In some cases, the index 153 does not form a part of and is instead separate from the media agent database 152.

A media agent index 153 or other data structure associated with the particular media agent 144 may include information about the stored data. For instance, for each secondary copy 116, the index 153 may include metadata such as a list of the data objects (e.g., files/subdirectories, database objects, mailbox objects, etc.), a path to the secondary copy 116 on the corresponding secondary storage device 108, location information indicating where the data objects are stored in the secondary storage device 108, when the data objects were created or modified, etc. Thus, the index 153 includes metadata associated with the secondary copies 116 that is readily available for use without having to be first retrieved from the secondary storage device 108. In yet further embodiments, some or all of the information in index 153 may instead or additionally be stored along with the secondary copies of data in a secondary storage device 108. In some embodiments, the secondary storage devices 108 can include sufficient information to perform a “bare metal restore”, where the operating system of a failed client computing device 102 or other restore target is automatically rebuilt as part of a restore operation.

Because the index 153 maintained in the media agent database 152 may operate as a cache, it can also be referred to as “an index cache.” In such cases, information stored in the index cache 153 typically comprises data that reflects certain particulars about storage operations that have occurred relatively recently. After some triggering event, such as after a certain period of time elapses, or the index cache 153 reaches a particular size, the index cache 153 may be copied or migrated to a secondary storage device(s) 108. This information may need to be retrieved and uploaded back into the index cache 153 or otherwise restored to a media agent 144 to facilitate retrieval of data from the secondary storage device(s) 108. In some embodiments, the cached information may include format or containerization information related to archives or other files stored on the storage device(s) 108. In this manner, the index cache 153 allows for accelerated restores.

In some alternative embodiments the media agent 144 generally acts as a coordinator or facilitator of storage operations between client computing devices 102 and corresponding secondary storage devices 108, but does not actually write the data to the secondary storage device 108. For instance, the storage manager 140 (or the media agent 144) may instruct a client computing device 102 and secondary storage device 108 to communicate with one another directly. In such a case the client computing device 102 transmits the data directly or via one or more intermediary components to the secondary storage device 108 according to the received instructions, and vice versa. In some such cases, the media agent 144 may still receive, process, and/or maintain metadata related to the storage operations. Moreover, in these embodiments, the payload data can flow through the media agent 144 for the purposes of populating the index cache 153 maintained in the media agent database 152, but not for writing to the secondary storage device 108.

The media agent 144 and/or other components such as the storage manager 140 may in some cases incorporate additional functionality, such as data classification, content indexing, deduplication, encryption, compression, and the like. Further details regarding these and other functions are described below.

Distributed, Scalable Architecture

As described, certain functions of the information management system 100 can be distributed amongst various physical and/or logical components in the system. For instance, one or more of the storage manager 140, data agents 142, and media agents 144 may operate on computing devices that are physically separate from one another. This architecture can provide a number of benefits.

For instance, hardware and software design choices for each distributed component can be targeted to suit its particular function. The secondary computing devices 106 on which the media agents 144 operate can be tailored for interaction with associated secondary storage devices 108 and provide fast index cache operation, among other specific tasks. Similarly, the client computing device(s) 102 can be selected to effectively service the applications 110 thereon, in order to efficiently produce and store primary data 112.

Moreover, in some cases, one or more of the individual components in the information management system 100 can be distributed to multiple, separate computing devices. As one example, for large file systems where the amount of data stored in the management database 146 is relatively large, the database 146 may be migrated to or otherwise reside on a specialized database server (e.g., an SQL server) separate from a server that implements the other functions of the storage manager 140. This distributed configuration can provide added protection because the database 146 can be protected with standard database utilities (e.g., SQL log shipping or database replication) independent from other functions of the storage manager 140. The database 146 can be efficiently replicated to a remote site for use in the event of a disaster or other data loss at the primary site. Or the database 146 can be replicated to another computing device within the same site, such as to a higher performance machine in the event that a storage manager host device can no longer service the needs of a growing information management system 100.

The distributed architecture also provides both scalability and efficient component utilization. FIG. 1D shows an embodiment of the information management system 100 including a plurality of client computing devices 102 and associated data agents 142 as well as a plurality of secondary storage computing devices 106 and associated media agents 144.

Additional components can be added or subtracted based on the evolving needs of the information management system 100. For instance, depending on where bottlenecks are identified, administrators can add additional client computing devices 102, secondary storage computing devices 106 (and corresponding media agents 144), and/or secondary storage devices 108. Moreover, where multiple fungible components are available, load balancing can be implemented to dynamically address identified bottlenecks. As an example, the storage manager 140 may dynamically select which media agents 144 and/or secondary storage devices 108 to use for storage operations based on a processing load analysis of the media agents 144 and/or secondary storage devices 108, respectively.

Moreover, each client computing device 102 in some embodiments can communicate with, among other components, any of the media agents 144, e.g., as directed by the storage manager 140. And each media agent 144 may be able to communicate with, among other components, any of the secondary storage devices 108, e.g., as directed by the storage manager 140. Thus, operations can be routed to the secondary storage devices 108 in a dynamic and highly flexible manner, to provide load balancing, failover, and the like. Further examples of scalable systems capable of dynamic storage operations, and of systems capable of performing load balancing and fail over are provided in U.S. Pat. No. 7,246,207, which is incorporated by reference herein.

In alternative configurations, certain components are not distributed and may instead reside and execute on the same computing device. For example, in some embodiments, one or more data agents 142 and the storage manager 140 operate on the same client computing device 102. In another embodiment, one or more data agents 142 and one or more media agents 144 operate on a single computing device.

Exemplary Types of Information Management Operations

In order to protect and leverage stored data, the information management system 100 can be configured to perform a variety of information management operations. As will be described, these operations can generally include secondary copy and other data movement operations, processing and data manipulation operations, analysis, reporting, and management operations. The operations described herein may be performed on any type of computing device, e.g., between two computers connected via a LAN, to a mobile client telecommunications device connected to a server via a WLAN, to any manner of client computing device coupled to a cloud storage target, etc., without limitation.

Data Movement Operations

Data movement operations according to certain embodiments are generally operations that involve the copying or migration of data (e.g., payload data) between different locations in the information management system 100 in an original/native and/or one or more different formats. For example, data movement operations can include operations in which stored data is copied, migrated, or otherwise transferred from one or more first storage devices to one or more second storage devices, such as from primary storage device(s) 104 to secondary storage device(s) 108, from secondary storage device(s) 108 to different secondary storage device(s) 108, from secondary storage devices 108 to primary storage devices 104, or from primary storage device(s) 104 to different primary storage device(s) 104.

Data movement operations can include by way of example, backup operations, archive operations, information lifecycle management operations such as hierarchical storage management operations, replication operations (e.g., continuous data replication operations), snapshot operations, deduplication or single-instancing operations, auxiliary copy operations, and the like. As will be discussed, some of these operations involve the copying, migration or other movement of data, without actually creating multiple, distinct copies. Nonetheless, some or all of these operations are referred to as “copy” operations for simplicity.

Backup Operations

A backup operation creates a copy of a version of data (e.g., one or more files or other data units) in primary data 112 at a particular point in time. Each subsequent backup copy may be maintained independently of the first. Further, a backup copy in some embodiments is generally stored in a form that is different than the native format, e.g., a backup format. This can be in contrast to the version in primary data 112 from which the backup copy is derived, and which may instead be stored in a native format of the source application(s) 110. In various cases, backup copies can be stored in a format in which the data is compressed, encrypted, deduplicated, and/or otherwise modified from the original application format. For example, a backup copy may be stored in a backup format that facilitates compression and/or efficient long-term storage.

Backup copies can have relatively long retention periods as compared to primary data 112, and may be stored on media with slower retrieval times than primary data 112 and certain other types of secondary copies 116. On the other hand, backups may have relatively shorter retention periods than some other types of secondary copies 116, such as archive copies (described below). Backups may sometimes be stored at an offsite location.

Backup operations can include full backups, differential backups, incremental backups, “synthetic full” backups, and/or creating a “reference copy.” A full backup (or “standard full backup”) in some embodiments is generally a complete image of the data to be protected. However, because full backup copies can consume a relatively large amount of storage, it can be useful to use a full backup copy as a baseline and only store changes relative to the full backup copy for subsequent backup copies.

For instance, a differential backup operation (or cumulative incremental backup operation) tracks and stores changes that have occurred since the last full backup. Differential backups can grow quickly in size, but can provide relatively efficient restore times because a restore can be completed in some cases using only the full backup copy and the latest differential copy.

An incremental backup operation generally tracks and stores changes since the most recent backup copy of any type, which can greatly reduce storage utilization. In some cases, however, restore times can be relatively long in comparison to full or differential backups because completing a restore operation may involve accessing a full backup in addition to multiple incremental backups.

Synthetic full backups generally consolidate data without directly backing up data from the client computing device. A synthetic full backup is created from the most recent full backup (i.e., standard or synthetic) and subsequent incremental and/or differential backups. The resulting synthetic full backup is identical to what would have been created had the last backup for the subclient been a standard full backup. Unlike standard full, incremental, and differential backups, a synthetic full backup does not actually transfer data from a client computer to the backup media, because it operates as a backup consolidator. A synthetic full backup extracts the index data of each participating subclient. Using this index data and the previously backed up user data images, it builds new full backup images, one for each subclient. The new backup images consolidate the index and user data stored in the related incremental, differential, and previous full backups, in some embodiments creating an archive file at the subclient level.

Any of the above types of backup operations can be at the volume-level, file-level, or block-level. Volume level backup operations generally involve the copying of a data volume (e.g., a logical disk or partition) as a whole. In a file-level backup, the information management system 100 may generally track changes to individual files, and includes copies of files in the backup copy. In the case of a block-level backup, files are broken into constituent blocks, and changes are tracked at the block-level. Upon restore, the information management system 100 reassembles the blocks into files in a transparent fashion.

Far less data may actually be transferred and copied to the secondary storage devices 108 during a file-level copy than a volume-level copy. Likewise, a block-level copy may involve the transfer of less data than a file-level copy, resulting in faster execution times. However, restoring a relatively higher-granularity copy can result in longer restore times. For instance, when restoring a block-level copy, the process of locating constituent blocks can sometimes result in longer restore times as compared to file-level backups. Similar to backup operations, the other types of secondary copy operations described herein can also be implemented at either the volume-level, file-level, or block-level.

For example, in some embodiments, a reference copy may comprise copy(ies) of selected objects from backed up data, typically to help organize data by keeping contextual information from multiple sources together, and/or help retain specific data for a longer period of time, such as for legal hold needs. A reference copy generally maintains data integrity, and when the data is restored, it may be viewed in the same format as the source data. In some embodiments, a reference copy is based on a specialized client, individual subclient and associated information management policies (e.g., storage policy, retention policy, etc.) that are administered within information management system 100.

Archive Operations

Because backup operations generally involve maintaining a version of the copied data in primary data 112 and also maintaining backup copies in secondary storage device(s) 108, they can consume significant storage capacity. To help reduce storage consumption, an archive operation according to certain embodiments creates a secondary copy 116 by both copying and removing source data. Or, seen another way, archive operations can involve moving some or all of the source data to the archive destination. Thus, data satisfying criteria for removal (e.g., data of a threshold age or size) may be removed from source storage. The source data may be primary data 112 or a secondary copy 116, depending on the situation. As with backup copies, archive copies can be stored in a format in which the data is compressed, encrypted, deduplicated, and/or otherwise modified from the format of the original application or source copy. In addition, archive copies may be retained for relatively long periods of time (e.g., years) and, in some cases, are never deleted. Archive copies are generally retained for longer periods of time than backup copies, for example. In certain embodiments, archive copies may be made and kept for extended periods in order to meet compliance regulations.

Moreover, when primary data 112 is archived, in some cases the corresponding primary data 112 or a portion thereof is deleted when creating the archive copy. Thus, archiving can serve the purpose of freeing up space in the primary storage device(s) 104 and easing the demand on computational resources on client computing device 102. Similarly, when a secondary copy 116 is archived, the secondary copy 116 may be deleted, and an archive copy can therefore serve the purpose of freeing up space in secondary storage device(s) 108. In contrast, source copies often remain intact when creating backup copies. Examples of compatible data archiving operations are provided in U.S. Pat. No. 7,107,298, which is incorporated by reference herein.

Snapshot Operations

Snapshot operations can provide a relatively lightweight, efficient mechanism for protecting data. From an end-user viewpoint, a snapshot may be thought of as an “instant” image of the primary data 112 at a given point in time, and may include state and/or status information relative to an application that creates/manages the primary data 112. In one embodiment, a snapshot may generally capture the directory structure of an object in primary data 112 such as a file or volume or other data set at a particular moment in time and may also preserve file attributes and contents. A snapshot in some cases is created relatively quickly, e.g., substantially instantly, using a minimum amount of file space, but may still function as a conventional file system backup.

A “hardware snapshot” (or “hardware-based snapshot”) operation can be a snapshot operation where a target storage device (e.g., a primary storage device 104 or a secondary storage device 108) performs the snapshot operation in a self-contained fashion, substantially independently, using hardware, firmware and/or software operating on the storage device itself. For instance, the storage device may be capable of performing snapshot operations upon request, generally without intervention or oversight from any of the other components in the information management system 100. In this manner, hardware snapshots can off-load other components of information management system 100 from processing involved in snapshot creation and management.

A “software snapshot” (or “software-based snapshot”) operation, on the other hand, can be a snapshot operation in which one or more other components in information management system 100 (e.g., client computing devices 102, data agents 142, etc.) implement a software layer that manages the snapshot operation via interaction with the target storage device. For instance, the component executing the snapshot management software layer may derive a set of pointers and/or data that represents the snapshot. The snapshot management software layer may then transmit the same to the target storage device, along with appropriate instructions for writing the snapshot.

Some types of snapshots do not actually create another physical copy of all the data as it existed at the particular point in time, but may simply create pointers that are able to map files and directories to specific memory locations (e.g., to specific disk blocks) where the data resides, as it existed at the particular point in time. For example, a snapshot copy may include a set of pointers derived from the file system or from an application. In some other cases, the snapshot may be created at the block-level, such that creation of the snapshot occurs without awareness of the file system. Each pointer points to a respective stored data block, so that collectively, the set of pointers reflect the storage location and state of the data object (e.g., file(s) or volume(s) or data set(s)) at a particular point in time when the snapshot copy was created.

An initial snapshot may use only a small amount of disk space needed to record a mapping or other data structure representing or otherwise tracking the blocks that correspond to the current state of the file system. Additional disk space is usually required only when files and directories are modified later on. Furthermore, when files are modified, typically only the pointers which map to blocks are copied, not the blocks themselves. In some embodiments, for example in the case of “copy-on-write” snapshots, when a block changes in primary storage, the block is copied to secondary storage or cached in primary storage before the block is overwritten in primary storage, and the pointer to that block is changed to reflect the new location of that block. The snapshot mapping of file system data may also be updated to reflect the changed block(s) at that particular point in time. In some other cases, a snapshot includes a full physical copy of all or substantially all of the data represented by the snapshot. Further examples of snapshot operations are provided in U.S. Pat. No. 7,529,782, which is incorporated by reference herein.

A snapshot copy in many cases can be made quickly and without significantly impacting primary computing resources because large amounts of data need not be copied or moved. In some embodiments, a snapshot may exist as a virtual file system, parallel to the actual file system. Users in some cases gain read-only access to the record of files and directories of the snapshot. By electing to restore primary data 112 from a snapshot taken at a given point in time, users may also return the current file system to the state of the file system that existed when the snapshot was taken.

Replication Operations

Another type of secondary copy operation is a replication operation. Some types of secondary copies 116 are used to periodically capture images of primary data 112 at particular points in time (e.g., backups, archives, and snapshots). However, it can also be useful for recovery purposes to protect primary data 112 in a more continuous fashion, by replicating the primary data 112 substantially as changes occur. In some cases a replication copy can be a mirror copy, for instance, where changes made to primary data 112 are mirrored or substantially immediately copied to another location (e.g., to secondary storage device(s) 108). By copying each write operation to the replication copy, two storage systems are kept synchronized or substantially synchronized so that they are virtually identical at approximately the same time. Where entire disk volumes are mirrored, however, mirroring can require significant amount of storage space and utilizes a large amount of processing resources.

According to some embodiments storage operations are performed on replicated data that represents a recoverable state, or “known good state” of a particular application running on the source system. For instance, in certain embodiments, known good replication copies may be viewed as copies of primary data 112. This feature allows the system to directly access, copy, restore, backup or otherwise manipulate the replication copies as if the data were the “live” primary data 112. This can reduce access time, storage utilization, and impact on source applications 110, among other benefits. Based on known good state information, the information management system 100 can replicate sections of application data that represent a recoverable state rather than rote copying of blocks of data. Examples of compatible replication operations (e.g., continuous data replication) are provided in U.S. Pat. No. 7,617,262, which is incorporated by reference herein.

Deduplication/Single-Instancing Operations

Another type of data movement operation is deduplication or single-instance storage, which is useful to reduce the amount of non-primary data. For instance, some or all of the above-described secondary storage operations can involve deduplication in some fashion. New data is read, broken down into portions (e.g., sub-file level blocks, files, etc.) of a selected granularity, compared with blocks that are already in secondary storage, and only the new blocks are stored. Blocks that already exist are represented as pointers to the already stored data.

In order to streamline the comparison process, the information management system 100 may calculate and/or store signatures (e.g., hashes or cryptographically unique IDs) corresponding to the individual data blocks in a database and compare the signatures instead of comparing entire data blocks. In some cases, only a single instance of each element is stored, and deduplication operations may therefore be referred to interchangeably as “single-instancing” operations. Depending on the implementation, however, deduplication or single-instancing operations can store more than one instance of certain data blocks, but nonetheless significantly reduce data redundancy. Depending on the embodiment, deduplication blocks can be of fixed or variable length. Using variable length blocks can provide enhanced deduplication by responding to changes in the data stream, but can involve complex processing. In some cases, the information management system 100 utilizes a technique for dynamically aligning deduplication blocks (e.g., fixed-length blocks) based on changing content in the data stream, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,364,652, which is incorporated by reference herein.

The information management system 100 can perform deduplication in a variety of manners at a variety of locations in the information management system 100. For instance, in some embodiments, the information management system 100 implements “target-side” deduplication by deduplicating data (e.g., secondary copies 116) stored in the secondary storage devices 108. In some such cases, the media agents 144 are generally configured to manage the deduplication process. For instance, one or more of the media agents 144 maintain a corresponding deduplication database that stores deduplication information (e.g., datablock signatures). Examples of such a configuration are provided in U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2012/0150826, which is incorporated by reference herein. Instead of or in combination with “target-side” deduplication, deduplication can also be performed on the “source-side” (or “client-side”), e.g., to reduce the amount of traffic between the media agents 144 and the client computing device(s) 102 and/or reduce redundant data stored in the primary storage devices 104. According to various implementations, one or more of the storage devices of the target-side and/or source-side of an operation can be cloud-based storage devices. Thus, the target-side and/or source-side deduplication can be cloud-based deduplication. In particular, as discussed previously, the storage manager 140 may communicate with other components within the information management system 100 via network protocols and cloud service provider APIs to facilitate cloud-based deduplication/single instancing. Examples of such deduplication techniques are provided in U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2012/0150818, which is incorporated by reference herein. Some other compatible deduplication/single instancing techniques are described in U.S. Pat. Pub. Nos. 2006/0224846 and 2009/0319534, which are incorporated by reference herein.

Information Lifecycle Management and Hierarchical Storage Management Operations

In some embodiments, files and other data over their lifetime move from more expensive, quick access storage to less expensive, slower access storage. Operations associated with moving data through various tiers of storage are sometimes referred to as information lifecycle management (ILM) operations.

One type of ILM operation is a hierarchical storage management (HSM) operation. A HSM operation is generally an operation for automatically moving data between classes of storage devices, such as between high-cost and low-cost storage devices. For instance, an HSM operation may involve movement of data from primary storage devices 104 to secondary storage devices 108, or between tiers of secondary storage devices 108. With each tier, the storage devices may be progressively relatively cheaper, have relatively slower access/restore times, etc. For example, movement of data between tiers may occur as data becomes less important over time.

In some embodiments, an HSM operation is similar to an archive operation in that creating an HSM copy may (though not always) involve deleting some of the source data, e.g., according to one or more criteria related to the source data. For example, an HSM copy may include data from primary data 112 or a secondary copy 116 that is larger than a given size threshold or older than a given age threshold and that is stored in a backup format.

Often, and unlike some types of archive copies, HSM data that is removed or aged from the source is replaced by a logical reference pointer or stub. The reference pointer or stub can be stored in the primary storage device 104 (or other source storage device, such as a secondary storage device 108) to replace the deleted source data and to point to or otherwise indicate the new location in a secondary storage device 108.

According to one example, files are generally moved between higher and lower cost storage depending on how often the files are accessed. When a user requests access to the HSM data that has been removed or migrated, the information management system 100 uses the stub to locate the data and may make recovery of the data appear transparent, even though the HSM data may be stored at a location different from other source data. In this manner, the data appears to the user (e.g., in file system browsing windows and the like) as if it still resides in the source location (e.g., in a primary storage device 104). The stub may also include some metadata associated with the corresponding data, so that a file system and/or application can provide some information about the data object and/or a limited-functionality version (e.g., a preview) of the data object.

An HSM copy may be stored in a format other than the native application format (e.g., where the data is compressed, encrypted, deduplicated, and/or otherwise modified from the original native application format). In some cases, copies which involve the removal of data from source storage and the maintenance of stub or other logical reference information on source storage may be referred to generally as “on-line archive copies”. On the other hand, copies which involve the removal of data from source storage without the maintenance of stub or other logical reference information on source storage may be referred to as “off-line archive copies”. Examples of HSM and ILM techniques are provided in U.S. Pat. No. 7,343,453, which is incorporated by reference herein.

Auxiliary Copy and Disaster Recovery Operations

An auxiliary copy is generally a copy operation in which a copy is created of an existing secondary copy 116. For instance, an initial secondary copy 116 may be generated using or otherwise be derived from primary data 112 (or other data residing in the secondary storage subsystem 118), whereas an auxiliary copy is generated from the initial secondary copy 116. Auxiliary copies can be used to create additional standby copies of data and may reside on different secondary storage devices 108 than the initial secondary copies 116. Thus, auxiliary copies can be used for recovery purposes if initial secondary copies 116 become unavailable. Exemplary compatible auxiliary copy techniques are described in further detail in U.S. Pat. No. 8,230,195, which is incorporated by reference herein.

The information management system 100 may also perform disaster recovery operations that make or retain disaster recovery copies, often as secondary, high-availability disk copies. The information management system 100 may create secondary disk copies and store the copies at disaster recovery locations using auxiliary copy or replication operations, such as continuous data replication technologies. Depending on the particular data protection goals, disaster recovery locations can be remote from the client computing devices 102 and primary storage devices 104, remote from some or all of the secondary storage devices 108, or both.

Data Analysis, Reporting, and Management Operations

Data analysis, reporting, and management operations can be different than data movement operations in that they do not necessarily involve the copying, migration or other transfer of data (e.g., primary data 112 or secondary copies 116) between different locations in the system. For instance, data analysis operations may involve processing (e.g., offline processing) or modification of already stored primary data 112 and/or secondary copies 116. However, in some embodiments data analysis operations are performed in conjunction with data movement operations. Some data analysis operations include content indexing operations and classification operations which can be useful in leveraging the data under management to provide enhanced search and other features. Other data analysis operations such as compression and encryption can provide data reduction and security benefits, respectively.

Classification Operations/Content Indexing

In some embodiments, the information management system 100 analyzes and indexes characteristics, content, and metadata associated with the primary data 112 and/or secondary copies 116. The content indexing can be used to identify files or other data objects having pre-defined content (e.g., user-defined keywords or phrases, other keywords/phrases that are not defined by a user, etc.), and/or metadata (e.g., email metadata such as “to”, “from”, “cc”, “bcc”, attachment name, received time, etc.).

The information management system 100 generally organizes and catalogues the results in a content index, which may be stored within the media agent database 152, for example. The content index can also include the storage locations of (or pointer references to) the indexed data in the primary data 112 or secondary copies 116, as appropriate. The results may also be stored, in the form of a content index database or otherwise, elsewhere in the information management system 100 (e.g., in the primary storage devices 104, or in the secondary storage device 108). Such index data provides the storage manager 140 or another component with an efficient mechanism for locating primary data 112 and/or secondary copies 116 of data objects that match particular criteria.

For instance, search criteria can be specified by a user through user interface 158 of the storage manager 140. In some cases, the information management system 100 analyzes data and/or metadata in secondary copies 116 to create an “off-line” content index, without significantly impacting the performance of the client computing devices 102. Depending on the embodiment, the system can also implement “on-line” content indexing, e.g., of primary data 112. Examples of compatible content indexing techniques are provided in U.S. Pat. No. 8,170,995, which is incorporated by reference herein.

One or more components can be configured to scan data and/or associated metadata for classification purposes to populate a database (or other data structure) of information, which can be referred to as a “data classification database” or a “metabase”. Depending on the embodiment, the data classification database(s) can be organized in a variety of different ways, including centralization, logical sub-divisions, and/or physical sub-divisions. For instance, one or more centralized data classification databases may be associated with different subsystems or tiers within the information management system 100. As an example, there may be a first centralized metabase associated with the primary storage subsystem 117 and a second centralized metabase associated with the secondary storage subsystem 118. In other cases, there may be one or more metabases associated with individual components, e.g., client computing devices 102 and/or media agents 144. In some embodiments, a data classification database (metabase) may reside as one or more data structures within management database 146, or may be otherwise associated with storage manager 140.

In some cases, the metabase(s) may be included in separate database(s) and/or on separate storage device(s) from primary data 112 and/or secondary copies 116, such that operations related to the metabase do not significantly impact performance on other components in the information management system 100. In other cases, the metabase(s) may be stored along with primary data 112 and/or secondary copies 116. Files or other data objects can be associated with identifiers (e.g., tag entries, etc.) in the media agent 144 (or other indices) to facilitate searches of stored data objects. Among a number of other benefits, the metabase can also allow efficient, automatic identification of files or other data objects to associate with secondary copy or other information management operations (e.g., in lieu of scanning an entire file system). Examples of compatible metabases and data classification operations are provided in U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,229,954 and 7,747,579, which are incorporated by reference herein.

Encryption Operations

The information management system 100 in some cases is configured to process data (e.g., files or other data objects, secondary copies 116, etc.), according to an appropriate encryption algorithm (e.g., Blowfish, Advanced Encryption Standard [AES], Triple Data Encryption Standard [3-DES], etc.) to limit access and provide data security in the information management system 100. The information management system 100 in some cases encrypts the data at the client level, such that the client computing devices 102 (e.g., the data agents 142) encrypt the data prior to forwarding the data to other components, e.g., before sending the data to media agents 144 during a secondary copy operation. In such cases, the client computing device 102 may maintain or have access to an encryption key or passphrase for decrypting the data upon restore. Encryption can also occur when creating copies of secondary copies, e.g., when creating auxiliary copies or archive copies. In yet further embodiments, the secondary storage devices 108 can implement built-in, high performance hardware encryption.

Management and Reporting Operations

Certain embodiments leverage the integrated, ubiquitous nature of the information management system 100 to provide useful system-wide management and reporting functions. Examples of some compatible management and reporting techniques are provided in U.S. Pat. No. 7,343,453, which is incorporated by reference herein.

Operations management can generally include monitoring and managing the health and performance of information management system 100 by, without limitation, performing error tracking, generating granular storage/performance metrics (e.g., job success/failure information, deduplication efficiency, etc.), generating storage modeling and costing information, and the like. As an example, a storage manager 140 or other component in the information management system 100 may analyze traffic patterns and suggest and/or automatically route data via a particular route to minimize congestion. In some embodiments, the system can generate predictions relating to storage operations or storage operation information. Such predictions, which may be based on a trending analysis, may predict various network operations or resource usage, such as network traffic levels, storage media use, use of bandwidth of communication links, use of media agent components, etc. Further examples of traffic analysis, trend analysis, prediction generation, and the like are described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,343,453, which is incorporated by reference herein.

In some configurations, a master storage manager 140 may track the status of storage operation cells in a hierarchy, such as the status of jobs, system components, system resources, and other items, by communicating with storage managers 140 (or other components) in the respective storage operation cells. Moreover, the master storage manager 140 may track the status of its associated storage operation cells and information management operations by receiving periodic status updates from the storage managers 140 (or other components) in the respective cells regarding jobs, system components, system resources, and other items. In some embodiments, a master storage manager 140 may store status information and other information regarding its associated storage operation cells and other system information in its index 150 (or other location).

The master storage manager 140 or other component may also determine whether certain storage-related criteria or other criteria are satisfied, and perform an action or trigger event (e.g., data migration) in response to the criteria being satisfied, such as where a storage threshold is met for a particular volume, or where inadequate protection exists for certain data. For instance, in some embodiments, data from one or more storage operation cells is used to dynamically and automatically mitigate recognized risks, and/or to advise users of risks or suggest actions to mitigate these risks. For example, an information management policy may specify certain requirements (e.g., that a storage device should maintain a certain amount of free space, that secondary copies should occur at a particular interval, that data should be aged and migrated to other storage after a particular period, that data on a secondary volume should always have a certain level of availability and be restorable within a given time period, that data on a secondary volume may be mirrored or otherwise migrated to a specified number of other volumes, etc.). If a risk condition or other criterion is triggered, the system may notify the user of these conditions and may suggest (or automatically implement) an action to mitigate or otherwise address the risk. For example, the system may indicate that data from a primary copy 112 should be migrated to a secondary storage device 108 to free space on the primary storage device 104. Examples of the use of risk factors and other triggering criteria are described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,343,453, which is incorporated by reference herein.

In some embodiments, the system 100 may also determine whether a metric or other indication satisfies particular storage criteria and, if so, perform an action. For example, as previously described, a storage policy or other definition might indicate that a storage manager 140 should initiate a particular action if a storage metric or other indication drops below or otherwise fails to satisfy specified criteria such as a threshold of data protection. Examples of such metrics are described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,343,453, which is incorporated by reference herein.

In some embodiments, risk factors may be quantified into certain measurable service or risk levels for ease of comprehension. For example, certain applications and associated data may be considered to be more important by an enterprise than other data and services. Financial compliance data, for example, may be of greater importance than marketing materials, etc. Network administrators may assign priority values or “weights” to certain data and/or applications, corresponding to the relative importance. The level of compliance of storage operations specified for these applications may also be assigned a certain value. Thus, the health, impact, and overall importance of a service may be determined, such as by measuring the compliance value and calculating the product of the priority value and the compliance value to determine the “service level” and comparing it to certain operational thresholds to determine whether it is acceptable. Further examples of the service level determination are provided in U.S. Pat. No. 7,343,453, which is incorporated by reference herein.

The system 100 may additionally calculate data costing and data availability associated with information management operation cells according to an embodiment of the invention. For instance, data received from the cell may be used in conjunction with hardware-related information and other information about system elements to determine the cost of storage and/or the availability of particular data in the system. Exemplary information generated could include how fast a particular department is using up available storage space, how long data would take to recover over a particular system pathway from a particular secondary storage device, costs over time, etc. Moreover, in some embodiments, such information may be used to determine or predict the overall cost associated with the storage of certain information. The cost associated with hosting a certain application may be based, at least in part, on the type of media on which the data resides, for example. Storage devices may be assigned to a particular cost categories, for example. Further examples of costing techniques are described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,343,453, which is incorporated by reference herein.

Any of the above types of information (e.g., information related to trending, predictions, job, cell or component status, risk, service level, costing, etc.) can generally be provided to users via the user interface 158 in a single, integrated view or console (not shown). The console may support a reporting capability that allows for the generation of a variety of reports, which may be tailored to a particular aspect of information management. Report types may include: scheduling, event management, media management and data aging. Available reports may also include backup history, data aging history, auxiliary copy history, job history, library and drive, media in library, restore history, and storage policy, etc., without limitation. Such reports may be specified and created at a certain point in time as a system analysis, forecasting, or provisioning tool. Integrated reports may also be generated that illustrate storage and performance metrics, risks and storage costing information. Moreover, users may create their own reports based on specific needs.

The integrated user interface 158 can include an option to show a “virtual view” of the system that graphically depicts the various components in the system using appropriate icons. As one example, the user interface 158 may provide a graphical depiction of one or more primary storage devices 104, the secondary storage devices 108, data agents 142 and/or media agents 144, and their relationship to one another in the information management system 100. The operations management functionality can facilitate planning and decision-making. For example, in some embodiments, a user may view the status of some or all jobs as well as the status of each component of the information management system 100. Users may then plan and make decisions based on this data. For instance, a user may view high-level information regarding storage operations for the information management system 100, such as job status, component status, resource status (e.g., communication pathways, etc.), and other information. The user may also drill down or use other means to obtain more detailed information regarding a particular component, job, or the like. Further examples of some reporting techniques and associated interfaces providing an integrated view of an information management system are provided in U.S. Pat. No. 7,343,453, which is incorporated by reference herein.

The information management system 100 can also be configured to perform system-wide e-discovery operations in some embodiments. In general, e-discovery operations provide a unified collection and search capability for data in the system, such as data stored in the secondary storage devices 108 (e.g., backups, archives, or other secondary copies 116). For example, the information management system 100 may construct and maintain a virtual repository for data stored in the information management system 100 that is integrated across source applications 110, different storage device types, etc. According to some embodiments, e-discovery utilizes other techniques described herein, such as data classification and/or content indexing.

Information Management Policies

As indicated previously, an information management policy 148 can include a data structure or other information source that specifies a set of parameters (e.g., criteria and rules) associated with secondary copy and/or other information management operations.

One type of information management policy 148 is a storage policy. According to certain embodiments, a storage policy generally comprises a data structure or other information source that defines (or includes information sufficient to determine) a set of preferences or other criteria for performing information management operations. Storage policies can include one or more of the following items: (1) what data will be associated with the storage policy; (2) a destination to which the data will be stored; (3) datapath information specifying how the data will be communicated to the destination; (4) the type of storage operation to be performed; and (5) retention information specifying how long the data will be retained at the destination (see, e.g., FIG. 1E).

As an illustrative example, data associated with a storage policy can be logically organized into groups. In some cases, these logical groupings can be referred to as “sub-clients”. A sub-client may represent static or dynamic associations of portions of a data volume. Sub-clients may represent mutually exclusive portions. Thus, in certain embodiments, a portion of data may be given a label and the association is stored as a static entity in an index, database or other storage location. Sub-clients may also be used as an effective administrative scheme of organizing data according to data type, department within the enterprise, storage preferences, or the like. Depending on the configuration, sub-clients can correspond to files, folders, virtual machines, databases, etc. In one exemplary scenario, an administrator may find it preferable to separate e-mail data from financial data using two different sub-clients.

A storage policy can define where data is stored by specifying a target or destination storage device (or group of storage devices). For instance, where the secondary storage device 108 includes a group of disk libraries, the storage policy may specify a particular disk library for storing the sub-clients associated with the policy. As another example, where the secondary storage devices 108 include one or more tape libraries, the storage policy may specify a particular tape library for storing the sub-clients associated with the storage policy, and may also specify a drive pool and a tape pool defining a group of tape drives and a group of tapes, respectively, for use in storing the sub-client data. While information in the storage policy can be statically assigned in some cases, some or all of the information in the storage policy can also be dynamically determined based on criteria, which can be set forth in the storage policy. For instance, based on such criteria, a particular destination storage device(s) (or other parameter of the storage policy) may be determined based on characteristics associated with the data involved in a particular storage operation, device availability (e.g., availability of a secondary storage device 108 or a media agent 144), network status and conditions (e.g., identified bottlenecks), user credentials, and the like).

Datapath information can also be included in the storage policy. For instance, the storage policy may specify network pathways and components to utilize when moving the data to the destination storage device(s). In some embodiments, the storage policy specifies one or more media agents 144 for conveying data associated with the storage policy between the source (e.g., one or more host client computing devices 102) and destination (e.g., a particular target secondary storage device 108).

A storage policy can also specify the type(s) of operations associated with the storage policy, such as a backup, archive, snapshot, auxiliary copy, or the like. Retention information can specify how long the data will be kept, depending on organizational needs (e.g., a number of days, months, years, etc.)

Another type of information management policy 148 is a scheduling policy, which specifies when and how often to perform operations. Scheduling parameters may specify with what frequency (e.g., hourly, weekly, daily, event-based, etc.) or under what triggering conditions secondary copy or other information management operations will take place. Scheduling policies in some cases are associated with particular components, such as particular logical groupings of data associated with a storage policy (e.g., a sub-client), client computing device 102, and the like. In one configuration, a separate scheduling policy is maintained for particular logical groupings of data on a client computing device 102. The scheduling policy specifies that those logical groupings are to be moved to secondary storage devices 108 every hour according to storage policies associated with the respective sub-clients.

When adding a new client computing device 102, administrators can manually configure information management policies 148 and/or other settings, e.g., via the user interface 158. However, this can be an involved process resulting in delays, and it may be desirable to begin data protection operations quickly, without awaiting human intervention. Thus, in some embodiments, the information management system 100 automatically applies a default configuration to client computing device 102. As one example, when one or more data agent(s) 142 are installed on one or more client computing devices 102, the installation script may register the client computing device 102 with the storage manager 140, which in turn applies the default configuration to the new client computing device 102. In this manner, data protection operations can begin substantially immediately. The default configuration can include a default storage policy, for example, and can specify any appropriate information sufficient to begin data protection operations. This can include a type of data protection operation, scheduling information, a target secondary storage device 108, data path information (e.g., a particular media agent 144), and the like.

Other types of information management policies 148 are possible, including one or more audit (or security) policies. An audit policy is a set of preferences, rules and/or criteria that protect sensitive data in the information management system 100. For example, an audit policy may define “sensitive objects” as files or objects that contain particular keywords (e.g., “confidential,” or “privileged”) and/or are associated with particular keywords (e.g., in metadata) or particular flags (e.g., in metadata identifying a document or email as personal, confidential, etc.). An audit policy may further specify rules for handling sensitive objects. As an example, an audit policy may require that a reviewer approve the transfer of any sensitive objects to a cloud storage site, and that if approval is denied for a particular sensitive object, the sensitive object should be transferred to a local primary storage device 104 instead. To facilitate this approval, the audit policy may further specify how a secondary storage computing device 106 or other system component should notify a reviewer that a sensitive object is slated for transfer.

Another type of information management policy 148 is a provisioning policy. A provisioning policy can include a set of preferences, priorities, rules, and/or criteria that specify how client computing devices 102 (or groups thereof) may utilize system resources, such as available storage on cloud storage and/or network bandwidth. A provisioning policy specifies, for example, data quotas for particular client computing devices 102 (e.g., a number of gigabytes that can be stored monthly, quarterly or annually). The storage manager 140 or other components may enforce the provisioning policy. For instance, the media agents 144 may enforce the policy when transferring data to secondary storage devices 108. If a client computing device 102 exceeds a quota, a budget for the client computing device 102 (or associated department) is adjusted accordingly or an alert may trigger.

While the above types of information management policies 148 have been described as separate policies, one or more of these can be generally combined into a single information management policy 148. For instance, a storage policy may also include or otherwise be associated with one or more scheduling, audit, or provisioning policies or operational parameters thereof. Moreover, while storage policies are typically associated with moving and storing data, other policies may be associated with other types of information management operations. The following is a non-exhaustive list of items the information management policies 148 may specify:

-   -   schedules or other timing information, e.g., specifying when         and/or how often to perform information management operations;     -   the type of copy 116 (e.g., type of secondary copy) and/or copy         format (e.g., snapshot, backup, archive, HSM, etc.);     -   a location or a class or quality of storage for storing         secondary copies 116 (e.g., one or more particular secondary         storage devices 108);     -   preferences regarding whether and how to encrypt, compress,         deduplicate, or otherwise modify or transform secondary copies         116;     -   which system components and/or network pathways (e.g., preferred         media agents 144) should be used to perform secondary storage         operations;     -   resource allocation among different computing devices or other         system components used in performing information management         operations (e.g., bandwidth allocation, available storage         capacity, etc.);     -   whether and how to synchronize or otherwise distribute files or         other data objects across multiple computing devices or hosted         services; and     -   retention information specifying the length of time primary data         112 and/or secondary copies 116 should be retained, e.g., in a         particular class or tier of storage devices, or within the         information management system 100.

Policies can additionally specify or depend on a variety of historical or current criteria that may be used to determine which rules to apply to a particular data object, system component, or information management operation, such as:

-   -   frequency with which primary data 112 or a secondary copy 116 of         a data object or metadata has been or is predicted to be used,         accessed, or modified;     -   time-related factors (e.g., aging information such as time since         the creation or modification of a data object);     -   deduplication information (e.g., hashes, data blocks,         deduplication block size, deduplication efficiency or other         metrics);     -   an estimated or historic usage or cost associated with different         components (e.g., with secondary storage devices 108);     -   the identity of users, applications 110, client computing         devices 102 and/or other computing devices that created,         accessed, modified, or otherwise utilized primary data 112 or         secondary copies 116;     -   a relative sensitivity (e.g., confidentiality, importance) of a         data object, e.g., as determined by its content and/or metadata;     -   the current or historical storage capacity of various storage         devices;     -   the current or historical network capacity of network pathways         connecting various components within the storage operation cell;     -   access control lists or other security information; and     -   the content of a particular data object (e.g., its textual         content) or of metadata associated with the data object.

Exemplary Storage Policy and Secondary Storage Operations

FIG. 1E includes a data flow diagram depicting performance of storage operations by an embodiment of an information management system 100, according to an exemplary storage policy 148A. The information management system 100 includes a storage manger 140, a client computing device 102 having a file system data agent 142A and an email data agent 142B operating thereon, a primary storage device 104, two media agents 144A, 144B, and two secondary storage devices 108A, 108B: a disk library 108A and a tape library 108B. As shown, the primary storage device 104 includes primary data 112A, which is associated with a logical grouping of data associated with a file system, and primary data 112B, which is associated with a logical grouping of data associated with email. Although for simplicity the logical grouping of data associated with the file system is referred to as a file system sub-client, and the logical grouping of data associated with the email is referred to as an email sub-client, the techniques described with respect to FIG. 1E can be utilized in conjunction with data that is organized in a variety of other manners.

As indicated by the dashed box, the second media agent 144B and the tape library 108B are “off-site”, and may therefore be remotely located from the other components in the information management system 100 (e.g., in a different city, office building, etc.). Indeed, “off-site” may refer to a magnetic tape located in storage, which must be manually retrieved and loaded into a tape drive to be read. In this manner, information stored on the tape library 108B may provide protection in the event of a disaster or other failure.

The file system sub-client and its associated primary data 112A in certain embodiments generally comprise information generated by the file system and/or operating system of the client computing device 102, and can include, for example, file system data (e.g., regular files, file tables, mount points, etc.), operating system data (e.g., registries, event logs, etc.), and the like. The e-mail sub-client, on the other hand, and its associated primary data 112B, include data generated by an e-mail application operating on the client computing device 102, and can include mailbox information, folder information, emails, attachments, associated database information, and the like. As described above, the sub-clients can be logical containers, and the data included in the corresponding primary data 112A, 112B may or may not be stored contiguously.

The exemplary storage policy 148A includes backup copy preferences (or rule set) 160, disaster recovery copy preferences rule set 162, and compliance copy preferences or rule set 164. The backup copy rule set 160 specifies that it is associated with a file system sub-client 166 and an email sub-client 168. Each of these sub-clients 166, 168 are associated with the particular client computing device 102. The backup copy rule set 160 further specifies that the backup operation will be written to the disk library 108A, and designates a particular media agent 144A to convey the data to the disk library 108A. Finally, the backup copy rule set 160 specifies that backup copies created according to the rule set 160 are scheduled to be generated on an hourly basis and to be retained for 30 days. In some other embodiments, scheduling information is not included in the storage policy 148A, and is instead specified by a separate scheduling policy.

The disaster recovery copy rule set 162 is associated with the same two sub-clients 166, 168. However, the disaster recovery copy rule set 162 is associated with the tape library 108B, unlike the backup copy rule set 160. Moreover, the disaster recovery copy rule set 162 specifies that a different media agent, namely 144B, will be used to convey the data to the tape library 108B. As indicated, disaster recovery copies created according to the rule set 162 will be retained for 60 days, and will be generated on a daily basis. Disaster recovery copies generated according to the disaster recovery copy rule set 162 can provide protection in the event of a disaster or other catastrophic data loss that would affect the backup copy 116A maintained on the disk library 108A.

The compliance copy rule set 164 is only associated with the email sub-client 168, and not the file system sub-client 166. Compliance copies generated according to the compliance copy rule set 164 will therefore not include primary data 112A from the file system sub-client 166. For instance, the organization may be under an obligation to store and maintain copies of email data for a particular period of time (e.g., 10 years) to comply with state or federal regulations, while similar regulations do not apply to the file system data. The compliance copy rule set 164 is associated with the same tape library 108B and media agent 144B as the disaster recovery copy rule set 162, although a different storage device or media agent could be used in other embodiments. Finally, the compliance copy rule set 164 specifies that copies generated under the compliance copy rule set 164 will be retained for 10 years, and will be generated on a quarterly basis.

At step 1, the storage manager 140 initiates a backup operation according to the backup copy rule set 160. For instance, a scheduling service running on the storage manager 140 accesses scheduling information from the backup copy rule set 160 or a separate scheduling policy associated with the client computing device 102, and initiates a backup copy operation on an hourly basis. Thus, at the scheduled time slot the storage manager 140 sends instructions to the client computing device 102 (i.e., to both data agent 142A and data agent 142B) to begin the backup operation.

At step 2, the file system data agent 142A and the email data agent 142B operating on the client computing device 102 respond to the instructions received from the storage manager 140 by accessing and processing the primary data 112A, 112B involved in the copy operation, which can be found in primary storage device 104. Because the operation is a backup copy operation, the data agent(s) 142A, 142B may format the data into a backup format or otherwise process the data.

At step 3, the client computing device 102 communicates the retrieved, processed data to the first media agent 144A, as directed by the storage manager 140, according to the backup copy rule set 160. In some other embodiments, the information management system 100 may implement a load-balancing, availability-based, or other appropriate algorithm to select from the available set of media agents 144A, 144B. Regardless of the manner the media agent 144A is selected, the storage manager 140 may further keep a record in the storage manager database 146 of the association between the selected media agent 144A and the client computing device 102 and/or between the selected media agent 144A and the backup copy 116A.

The target media agent 144A receives the data from the client computing device 102, and at step 4 conveys the data to the disk library 108A to create the backup copy 116A, again at the direction of the storage manager 140 and according to the backup copy rule set 160. The secondary storage device 108A can be selected in other ways. For instance, the media agent 144A may have a dedicated association with a particular secondary storage device(s), or the storage manager 140 or media agent 144A may select from a plurality of secondary storage devices, e.g., according to availability, using one of the techniques described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,246,207, which is incorporated by reference herein.

The media agent 144A can also update its index 153 to include data and/or metadata related to the backup copy 116A, such as information indicating where the backup copy 116A resides on the disk library 108A, data and metadata for cache retrieval, etc. The storage manager 140 may similarly update its index 150 to include information relating to the storage operation, such as information relating to the type of storage operation, a physical location associated with one or more copies created by the storage operation, the time the storage operation was performed, status information relating to the storage operation, the components involved in the storage operation, and the like. In some cases, the storage manager 140 may update its index 150 to include some or all of the information stored in the index 153 of the media agent 144A. After the 30 day retention period expires, the storage manager 140 instructs the media agent 144A to delete the backup copy 116A from the disk library 108A. Indexes 150 and/or 153 are updated accordingly.

At step 5, the storage manager 140 initiates the creation of a disaster recovery copy 116B according to the disaster recovery copy rule set 162.

At step 6, illustratively based on the instructions received from the storage manager 140 at step 5, the specified media agent 144B retrieves the most recent backup copy 116A from the disk library 108A.

At step 7, again at the direction of the storage manager 140 and as specified in the disaster recovery copy rule set 162, the media agent 144B uses the retrieved data to create a disaster recovery copy 116B on the tape library 108B. In some cases, the disaster recovery copy 116B is a direct, mirror copy of the backup copy 116A, and remains in the backup format. In other embodiments, the disaster recovery copy 116B may be generated in some other manner, such as by using the primary data 112A, 112B from the primary storage device 104 as source data. The disaster recovery copy operation is initiated once a day and the disaster recovery copies 116B are deleted after 60 days; indexes are updated accordingly when/after each information management operation is executed/completed.

At step 8, the storage manager 140 initiates the creation of a compliance copy 116C, according to the compliance copy rule set 164. For instance, the storage manager 140 instructs the media agent 144B to create the compliance copy 116C on the tape library 108B at step 9, as specified in the compliance copy rule set 164. In the example, the compliance copy 116C is generated using the disaster recovery copy 116B. In other embodiments, the compliance copy 116C is instead generated using either the primary data 112B corresponding to the email sub-client or using the backup copy 116A from the disk library 108A as source data. As specified, in the illustrated example, compliance copies 116C are created quarterly, and are deleted after ten years, and indexes are kept up-to-date accordingly.

While not shown in FIG. 1E, at some later point in time, a restore operation can be initiated involving one or more of the secondary copies 116A, 116B, 116C. As one example, a user may manually initiate a restore of the backup copy 116A by interacting with the user interface 158 of the storage manager 140. The storage manager 140 then accesses data in its index 150 (and/or the respective storage policy 148A) associated with the selected backup copy 116A to identify the appropriate media agent 144A and/or secondary storage device 108A.

In other cases, a media agent may be selected for use in the restore operation based on a load balancing algorithm, an availability based algorithm, or other criteria. The selected media agent 144A retrieves the data from the disk library 108A. For instance, the media agent 144A may access its index 153 to identify a location of the backup copy 116A on the disk library 108A, or may access location information residing on the disk 108A itself.

When the backup copy 116A was recently created or accessed, the media agent 144A accesses a cached version of the backup copy 116A residing in the index 153, without having to access the disk library 108A for some or all of the data. Once it has retrieved the backup copy 116A, the media agent 144A communicates the data to the source client computing device 102. Upon receipt, the file system data agent 142A and the email data agent 142B may unpackage (e.g., restore from a backup format to the native application format) the data in the backup copy 116A and restore the unpackaged data to the primary storage device 104.

Exemplary Applications of Storage Policies

The storage manager 140 may permit a user to specify aspects of the storage policy 148A. For example, the storage policy can be modified to include information governance policies to define how data should be managed in order to comply with a certain regulation or business objective. The various policies may be stored, for example, in the management database 146. An information governance policy may comprise a classification policy, which is described herein. An information governance policy may align with one or more compliance tasks that are imposed by regulations or business requirements. Examples of information governance policies might include a Sarbanes-Oxley policy, a HIPAA policy, an electronic discovery (E-Discovery) policy, and so on.

Information governance policies allow administrators to obtain different perspectives on all of an organization's online and offline data, without the need for a dedicated data silo created solely for each different viewpoint. As described previously, the data storage systems herein build a centralized index that reflects the contents of a distributed data set that spans numerous clients and storage devices, including both primary and secondary copies, and online and offline copies. An organization may apply multiple information governance policies in a top-down manner over that unified data set and indexing schema in order to permit an organization to view and manipulate the single data set through different lenses, each of which is adapted to a particular compliance or business goal. Thus, for example, by applying an E-discovery policy and a Sarbanes-Oxley policy, two different groups of users in an organization can conduct two very different analyses of the same underlying physical set of data copies, which may be distributed throughout the organization and information management system.

A classification policy defines a taxonomy of classification terms or tags relevant to a compliance task and/or business objective. A classification policy may also associate a defined tag with a classification rule. A classification rule defines a particular combination of criteria, such as users who have created, accessed or modified a document or data object; file or application types; content or metadata keywords; clients or storage locations; dates of data creation and/or access; review status or other status within a workflow (e.g., reviewed or un-reviewed); modification times or types of modifications; and/or any other data attributes in any combination, without limitation. A classification rule may also be defined using other classification tags in the taxonomy. The various criteria used to define a classification rule may be combined in any suitable fashion, for example, via Boolean operators, to define a complex classification rule. As an example, an E-discovery classification policy might define a classification tag “privileged” that is associated with documents or data objects that (1) were created or modified by legal department staff, or (2) were sent to or received from outside counsel via email, or (3) contain one of the following keywords: “privileged” or “attorney” or “counsel”, or other like terms.

One specific type of classification tag, which may be added to an index at the time of indexing, is an entity tag. An entity tag may be, for example, any content that matches a defined data mask format. Examples of entity tags might include, e.g., social security numbers (e.g., any numerical content matching the formatting mask XXX-XX-XXXX), credit card numbers (e.g., content having a 13-16 digit string of numbers), SKU numbers, product numbers, etc.

A user may define a classification policy by indicating criteria, parameters or descriptors of the policy via a graphical user interface, such as a form or page with fields to be filled in, pull-down menus or entries allowing one or more of several options to be selected, buttons, sliders, hypertext links or other known user interface tools for receiving user input, etc. For example, a user may define certain entity tags, such as a particular product number or project ID code that is relevant in the organization. In some implementations, the classification policy can be implemented using cloud-based techniques. For example, the storage devices may be cloud storage devices, and the storage manager 140 may execute cloud service provider API over a network to classify data stored on cloud storage devices.

Exemplary Secondary Copy Formatting

The formatting and structure of secondary copies 116 can vary, depending on the embodiment. In some cases, secondary copies 116 are formatted as a series of logical data units or “chunks” (e.g., 512 MB, 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, or 8 GB chunks). This can facilitate efficient communication and writing to secondary storage devices 108, e.g., according to resource availability. For example, a single secondary copy 116 may be written on a chunk-by-chunk basis to a single secondary storage device 108 or across multiple secondary storage devices 108. In some cases, users can select different chunk sizes, e.g., to improve throughput to tape storage devices.

Generally, each chunk can include a header and a payload. The payload can include files (or other data units) or subsets thereof included in the chunk, whereas the chunk header generally includes metadata relating to the chunk, some or all of which may be derived from the payload. For example, during a secondary copy operation, the media agent 144, storage manager 140, or other component may divide the associated files into chunks and generate headers for each chunk by processing the constituent files. The headers can include a variety of information such as file identifier(s), volume(s), offset(s), or other information associated with the payload data items, a chunk sequence number, etc. Importantly, in addition to being stored with the secondary copy 116 on the secondary storage device 108, the chunk headers can also be stored to the index 153 of the associated media agent(s) 144 and/or the index 150. This is useful in some cases for providing faster processing of secondary copies 116 during restores or other operations. In some cases, once a chunk is successfully transferred to a secondary storage device 108, the secondary storage device 108 returns an indication of receipt, e.g., to the media agent 144 and/or storage manager 140, which may update their respective indexes 153, 150 accordingly. During restore, chunks may be processed (e.g., by the media agent 144) according to the information in the chunk header to reassemble the files.

Data can also be communicated within the information management system 100 in data channels that connect the client computing devices 102 to the secondary storage devices 108. These data channels can be referred to as “data streams”, and multiple data streams can be employed to parallelize an information management operation, improving data transfer rate, among providing other advantages. Example data formatting techniques including techniques involving data streaming, chunking, and the use of other data structures in creating copies (e.g., secondary copies) are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,315,923 and 8,156,086, and 8,578,120, each of which is incorporated by reference herein.

FIGS. 1F and 1G are diagrams of example data streams 170 and 171, respectively, which may be employed for performing data storage operations. Referring to FIG. 1F, the data agent 142 forms the data stream 170 from the data associated with a client computing device 102 (e.g., primary data 112). The data stream 170 is composed of multiple pairs of stream header 172 and stream data (or stream payload) 174. The data streams 170 and 171 shown in the illustrated example are for a single-instanced storage operation, and a stream payload 174 therefore may include both single-instance (“SI”) data and/or non-SI data. A stream header 172 includes metadata about the stream payload 174. This metadata may include, for example, a length of the stream payload 174, an indication of whether the stream payload 174 is encrypted, an indication of whether the stream payload 174 is compressed, an archive file identifier (ID), an indication of whether the stream payload 174 is single instanceable, and an indication of whether the stream payload 174 is a start of a block of data.

Referring to FIG. 1G, the data stream 171 has the stream header 172 and stream payload 174 aligned into multiple data blocks. In this example, the data blocks are of size 64 KB. The first two stream header 172 and stream payload 174 pairs comprise a first data block of size 64 KB. The first stream header 172 indicates that the length of the succeeding stream payload 174 is 63 KB and that it is the start of a data block. The next stream header 172 indicates that the succeeding stream payload 174 has a length of 1 KB and that it is not the start of a new data block. Immediately following stream payload 174 is a pair comprising an identifier header 176 and identifier data 178. The identifier header 176 includes an indication that the succeeding identifier data 178 includes the identifier for the immediately previous data block. The identifier data 178 includes the identifier that the data agent 142 generated for the data block. The data stream 171 also includes other stream header 172 and stream payload 174 pairs, which may be for SI data and/or for non-SI data.

FIG. 1H is a diagram illustrating the data structures 180 that may be used to store blocks of SI data and non-SI data on the storage device (e.g., secondary storage device 108). According to certain embodiments, the data structures 180 do not form part of a native file system of the storage device. The data structures 180 include one or more volume folders 182, one or more chunk folders 184/185 within the volume folder 182, and multiple files within the chunk folder 184. Each chunk folder 184/185 includes a metadata file 186/187, a metadata index file 188/189, one or more container files 190/191/193, and a container index file 192/194. The metadata file 186/187 stores non-SI data blocks as well as links to SI data blocks stored in container files. The metadata index file 188/189 stores an index to the data in the metadata file 186/187. The container files 190/191/193 store SI data blocks. The container index file 192/194 stores an index to the container files 190/191/193. Among other things, the container index file 192/194 stores an indication of whether a corresponding block in a container file 190/191/193 is referred to by a link in a metadata file 186/187. For example, data block B2 in the container file 190 is referred to by a link in the metadata file 187 in the chunk folder 185. Accordingly, the corresponding index entry in the container index file 192 indicates that the data block B2 in the container file 190 is referred to. As another example, data block B1 in the container file 191 is referred to by a link in the metadata file 187, and so the corresponding index entry in the container index file 192 indicates that this data block is referred to.

As an example, the data structures 180 illustrated in FIG. 1H may have been created as a result of two storage operations involving two client computing devices 102. For example, a first storage operation on a first client computing device 102 could result in the creation of the first chunk folder 184, and a second storage operation on a second client computing device 102 could result in the creation of the second chunk folder 185. The container files 190/191 in the first chunk folder 184 would contain the blocks of SI data of the first client computing device 102. If the two client computing devices 102 have substantially similar data, the second storage operation on the data of the second client computing device 102 would result in the media agent 144 storing primarily links to the data blocks of the first client computing device 102 that are already stored in the container files 190/191. Accordingly, while a first storage operation may result in storing nearly all of the data subject to the storage operation, subsequent storage operations involving similar data may result in substantial data storage space savings, because links to already stored data blocks can be stored instead of additional instances of data blocks.

If the operating system of the secondary storage computing device 106 on which the media agent 144 operates supports sparse files, then when the media agent 144 creates container files 190/191/193, it can create them as sparse files. A sparse file is type of file that may include empty space (e.g., a sparse file may have real data within it, such as at the beginning of the file and/or at the end of the file, but may also have empty space in it that is not storing actual data, such as a contiguous range of bytes all having a value of zero). Having the container files 190/191/193 be sparse files allows the media agent 144 to free up space in the container files 190/191/193 when blocks of data in the container files 190/191/193 no longer need to be stored on the storage devices. In some examples, the media agent 144 creates a new container file 190/191/193 when a container file 190/191/193 either includes 100 blocks of data or when the size of the container file 190 exceeds 50 MB. In other examples, the media agent 144 creates a new container file 190/191/193 when a container file 190/191/193 satisfies other criteria (e.g., it contains from approximately 100 to approximately 1000 blocks or when its size exceeds approximately 50 MB to 1 GB).

In some cases, a file on which a storage operation is performed may comprise a large number of data blocks. For example, a 100 MB file may comprise 400 data blocks of size 256 KB. If such a file is to be stored, its data blocks may span more than one container file, or even more than one chunk folder. As another example, a database file of 20 GB may comprise over 40,000 data blocks of size 512 KB. If such a database file is to be stored, its data blocks will likely span multiple container files, multiple chunk folders, and potentially multiple volume folders. Restoring such files may require accessing multiple container files, chunk folders, and/or volume folders to obtain the requisite data blocks.

Introduction: Personal Storage Table (PST) Files

A data storage system may be configured to store data files containing multiple email files or other data objects. For example, in certain embodiments the data storage system stores Personal Storage Table (PST) files, which is a file format used to store copies of emails (e.g., emails downloaded from an email server), contacts, calendar events, and other items in certain existing mail applications (e.g., Microsoft Exchange Client, Windows Messaging, and/or Microsoft Outlook). For example, in Microsoft Outlook, a PST file may contain all the folders on a user account, including inbox, tasks, sent items, outbox, deleted items, and any other user-created folders.

PST files (or other mail data files) may be stored locally on a client computer (e.g., on the hard drive of a user's laptop), and may be used to store archived items and provide off-line availability of mail data to the client. For example, the user may be able to access the mail data stored in the PST file even when the network, mail server, or Internet is down. In certain embodiments, if a user is given limited storage space on on-line mail servers, he or she may not be able to store all the mail data on the on-line mail servers. In such a case, the user can move mail and other files to locally-stored PST files to free up the storage space on the on-line mail servers. In other embodiments, the mail application may automatically store all mail data generated or received by the mail application in one or more PST files. PST files may use a fixed-block-based allocation scheme, wherein the PST file size is substantially constant. In certain embodiments, the space occupied by the PST files may be significant (e.g., 2 GB, 10 GB, 20 GB, 50 GB, etc.). The mail application (or the computing system) may impose a limit on the file size of the PST file. Off-line mail data files such as PST data files or other mail data files can be generally different than on-line mail data in that the data in the off-line mail data files is not changed by a mail program (e.g., Microsoft Outlook) as the result of mail traffic when the mail program is in an on-line state. In contrast, on-line mail data is updated by the mail program when the program is on-line, such as when a message is sent or received, and the appropriate mailbox (e.g., Inbox or Sent Items folder) is updated to include the new message.

As discussed above, since the PST file likely contains data that is important to the user, the user may wish to protect the PST file against data loss (e.g., caused by a hard drive failure) by periodically backing up the PST file to secondary storage such as an external hard drive or a storage device connected via a network. However, PST files are often significantly large, and the process of backing up the PST file may take a long time. In addition, some enterprises may have thousands of employees, with each employee constantly generating off-line mail data. Thus, it is desirable to limit the frequency of the backup of the PST file to a level that will ensure adequate protection of the data without unnecessarily consuming computing/network resources.

Rebalancing of PST Files

Depending on the data structure used to store the off-line mail data, the performance of data operations (e.g., insertion, search, retrieval, deletion, etc.) performed on the data structure may degrade as the data structure (e.g., b-tree data structure) becomes unbalanced. Thus, the mail application may rebalance the off-line mail data to make processing the data structure storing the off-line mail data more efficient and/or otherwise improve the data operations performed on the data structure. In some embodiments, the rebalancing is performed on the client computing device (e.g., user's laptop) when the system is idle or slows down (e.g., not busy performing other operations). In another embodiment, the rebalancing is performed periodically according to a rebalancing schedule. In yet another embodiment, the rebalancing is performed after the data structure storing the off-line mail data has become unbalanced beyond a certain threshold. The rebalancing may comprise any known rebalancing techniques used for rebalancing tree data structures (e.g., binary trees) or other types of data structures, for example.

In certain embodiments, the rebalancing is performed even when there is no change to the off-line mail data. For example, Microsoft Outlook executing on the user's computer may restructure or otherwise modify the PST file such that certain data operations can be performed more efficiently, even when no new mail item is received or no existing mail item is deleted.

As described above, rebalancing the PST file may cause the metadata of the PST file to be modified. For example, after the PST file is rebalanced, the “last modified” metadata of the PST file may be updated to reflect the time when the rebalancing was performed. This may cause the system to back up the PST file, such as where a threshold condition for performing a backup of the backup of the PST file is whether the PST file has been modified since the latest backup. Thus, it is desirable to adjust the backup process of the off-line mail data (e.g., the PST file) such that mere rebalancing of the off-line mail data does not cause the system to back up the off-line mail data, especially when the actual content (e.g., mail items stored therein) of the off-line mail data has not changed. Certain example embodiments for improving the off-line mail data backup process are described below with reference to FIGS. 2-5.

Other File Types

While certain embodiments described herein refer to PST files, it should be understood that other types of files configured to contain mail data, calendar data, and/or the like (e.g., other off-line mail data files such as off-line storage table [OST] files in Microsoft Exchange) may be applicable alternatively or in addition to PST files, and the techniques described with respect to PST files may apply equally to such alternative file types. Furthermore, references to PST files or other mail data files may refer or apply to file types associated with applications other than the Microsoft applications listed above, such as various Macintosh mail/calendar applications and the like. Although rebalancing of the PST file is given as an example herein, the techniques described herein may be extended to any process performed on the PST file that modifies the PST file without changing the mail content stored therein. In some embodiments, the techniques described herein may be applicable to any data whose backup is desired but cannot be backed up frequently due to its size. In other embodiments, the techniques described herein may be applicable to any data whose backup is desired when the content included in the data has changed (e.g., additional content has been added, or existing content has been removed, etc.).

An Exemplary System for Implementing Off-Line Mail Data Backup Process

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary system 200 configured to implement an off-line mail data backup process in accordance with one or more embodiments disclosed herein. As illustrated, the exemplary system 200 includes a client computing device 202, a mail server 204, a storage manager 206, one or more media agents 208, and secondary storage 210.

The client computing device 202 includes a mail application 212, a data agent 214, primary storage 216 storing off-line mail data 218, other applications 220, and other data agents 222. The mail application 212 may generate emails, calendar events, contacts, and/or other data, and store the data in the primary storage 216 as the off-line mail data 218. Alternatively, or additionally, a secondary copy of the off-line mail data 218 may be created by transferring the off-line mail data 218 over a network connection and storing it at least partially on the secondary storage 210, via a backup copy operation or another type of appropriate secondary copy operation. In certain embodiments, the off-line mail data 218 is stored as one or more PST files.

The data agent 214 may be configured to access data and/or metadata stored in the primary storage 216 associated with the client computing device 202 and process the data as appropriate. For example, the data agent 214 may access the off-line mail data 218 stored in the primary storage 216, and process the metadata of the off-line mail data 218 to determine whether to back up the off-line mail data 218 onto the secondary storage 210. In certain embodiments, the off-line mail data manager 232 of the storage manager 206 may direct the data agent 214 (e.g., using the control information described above with reference to FIG. 1D) to perform a backup of the off-line mail data 218.

FIG. 2 illustrates (to the left of the block representing the data agent 214) an example routine that may be performed by the data agent 214. For example, the data agent 214 may first scan for any change to the off-line mail data 218. If any change to the off-line mail data 218 is detected, the data agent 214 calculates and compares the score of the off-line mail data 218 and compares it to the score of the most recently stored backup of the off-line mail data 218. If the comparison satisfies certain threshold criteria, the data agent 214 may back up the off-line mail data 218. In this manner, the system 200 can provide a way of improving the off-line mail data backup process. For example, the system 200 can reduce the instances of unnecessary backups by performing backups based on whether the content of the off-line mail data 218 (e.g., PST file) has changed since the latest backup, and not just whether the off-line mail data 218 (e.g., PST file) has been modified since the latest backup. The scan and backup routine performed by the data agent 214 is described later in greater detail with reference to FIG. 3.

In some embodiments, the data agent 214 may be distributed between the client computing device 202 and the storage manager 206, or may be deployed from a remote location or its functions approximated by a remote process that performs some or all of the functions of the data agent 214. In some embodiments, the system 200 can employ multiple other data agents 222, each of which may manage data associated with a different application among the other applications 220. In some embodiments, the data agent 214 may comprise multiple data agents, and different individual data agents 214 may be designed to handle different Microsoft Outlook data, such as email data, calendar data, contact data, task manager data, or the like. Each data agent 214 may be configured to access the PST file and/or the metadata thereof stored in the primary storage 216 associated with the data agent 214 and process the data as appropriate. As shown in FIG. 2, in addition to the mail application 212 and the data agent 214, other applications 220 and other data agents 222 may reside on the client computing device 202.

Otherwise, the client computing device 202 (or one or more components thereof) may be the same or substantially similar to the client computing device 102 (or one or more components thereof) described above with reference FIGS. 1A-1G. For example, the client computing device 202 may further provide one or more functionalities of the client computing device 102 described above.

The mail server 204 includes a mail server application 224, a data agent 226, and a primary storage 228 storing on-line mail data 230. The mail server 204 may comprise a Microsoft Exchange server. In some embodiments, the on-line mail data 230 comprises copies of emails, calendar events, contacts, and/or other data generated by the mail application 212 of the client computing device 202. In some embodiments, the on-line mail data 230 comprises mail data received from other computing devices connected to the mail server 204 via a network. The data agent 226 may perform one or more of the functions of the data agents described herein with respect to the transfer of mail data between the mail server 204 and one or more of the other components of the system 200.

The storage manger 206 includes off-line mail data manager 232. The off-line mail data manager 232 may manage and store various preferences and policies regarding storage, backup, encryption, compression, or deduplication of the off-line mail data 218. A system administrator may be able to configure and initiate certain off-line mail data management operations. For example, the system administrator may create or modify one or more off-line mail data backup policies via the off-line mail data manager 232. Further, the system 200 may utilize off-line mail data management policies for specifying and executing off-line mail data management operations (e.g., to back up the off-line mail data on an automated basis). In certain embodiments, one or more off-line mail data backup policies may specify how often the off-line mail data 218 is to be scanned (e.g., every 20 minutes) to determine whether a backup is needed or desired, and may further specify the threshold criteria to be satisfied before a backup of the off-line mail data 218 is performed. Such off-line mail data management policies may be stored in any appropriate location, such as the off-line mail data manager 232, the client computing device 202, or the secondary storage 210. Otherwise, the storage manager 206 (or one or more components thereof) may be the same or substantially similar to the storage manager 140 (or one or more components thereof) described above with reference FIGS. 1A-1G. For example, the storage manager 206 may further provide one or more functionalities of the storage manager 140 described above.

The media agent(s) 208 may be implemented as a software module that manages, coordinates, and facilitates the transmission of the off-line mail data 218, as directed by the storage manager 206, to and/or from the secondary storage 210 (e.g., between the client computing device 202 and the secondary storage device 210). Although the secondary storage 210 is shown as a single secondary storage device in the example of FIG. 2, it should be appreciated that any number of secondary storage devices may be used, as described with reference to FIG. 1D. For example, upon receiving a data backup request from the client computing device 202 or the storage manager 206, the media agent(s) 208 may route and/or store the off-line mail data to the appropriate secondary storage device 210, or modify or add to the existing copy of the off-line mail data stored in the secondary storage device 210. Otherwise, the media agent(s) 208 (or one or more components thereof) may be the same or substantially similar to the media agent(s) 144 (or one or more components thereof) described above with reference FIGS. 1A-1G. For example, the media agent(s) 208 may further provide one or more functionalities of the media agent(s) 144 described above. Although not shown in FIG. 2, the media agent(s) 208 may be implemented on one or more corresponding secondary storage computing devices as described previously (e.g., with respect to FIG. 1C).

The illustrated secondary storage 210 contains off-line mail data 234 and on-line mail data 236. The off-line mail data 234 may comprise a backup copy of the off-line mail data 218. The on-line mail data 236 may comprise a backup copy of the on-line mail data 230. Alternatively, in another embodiment, the secondary storage 210 may store only the off-line mail data 234 and not the on-line mail data 236. In yet another embodiment, the secondary storage 210 may store other data in addition to those shown in the example of FIG. 2. Otherwise, the secondary storage 210 (or one or more components thereof) may be substantially the same or similar to the secondary storage 108 (or one or more components thereof) described above with reference FIGS. 1A-1G. For example, the secondary storage 210 may further provide one or more functionalities of the secondary storage 108 described above.

The system 200 and corresponding components of FIG. 2 may be similar to or the same as the system 100 and similarly named components shown in any of FIGS. 1A-1H, where applicable, such as FIG. 1D. Moreover, depending on the embodiment, the system 200 of FIG. 2 may additionally include any of the other components shown in FIG. 1D that are not specifically shown in FIG. 2. The system 200 may include one or more of each component. All components of the system 200 can be in direct communication with each other or communicate indirectly via the client computing device 202, the storage manager 206, the media agent 208, or the like. In certain embodiments, some of the components in FIG. 2 shown as separate components can reside on a single computing device. Alternatively, or additionally, one or more components shown in FIG. 2 as residing on a single computing device can be distributed across multiple devices.

Example Flow Diagrams Illustrating Data Backup Process

FIG. 3 is flow diagram illustrative of one embodiment of a routine 300 for backing up off-line mail data of client computing devices. The routine 300 is described with respect to the system 200 of FIG. 2. However, one or more of the steps of routine 300 may be implemented by other information management systems, such as those described in greater detail above with reference to FIG. 1D. The routine 300 can be implemented by any one, or a combination of, a client, a storage manager, a data agent, a customized deployment manager, a media agent, and the like. Although the steps in the routine 300 are described as being performed by the data agent 214 of the system 200, the embodiments discussed herein are not limited as such, and the steps in the routine 300 may be performed by other components of the system 200, either alone or in combination.

At block 302, the routine 300 begins. At block 304, the data agent 214 associated with the mail application 212 executing on the client computing device 202 checks if the off-line mail data 218 stored in the primary storage 216 has been modified since the last backup of the off-line mail data 218. For example, the data agent 214 may check the metadata of the PST file generated and stored by the mail application 212 to determine the time that the PST file was last modified and compare that time with the time at which the PST file was most recently backed up.

At block 306, if the data agent 214 determines that the off-line mail data 218 has not been modified since the last backup, the routine 300 returns to block 304. In certain examples, although not illustrated in FIG. 3, the data agent 214 performs the check on a periodic basis, and allows a specified period of time (e.g., 20 minutes) to pass before checking whether the off-line mail data 218 has been modified at block 304. In other examples, the data agent 214 checks whether the off-line mail data 218 has been modified on an event-driven basis, after a specified event occurs (e.g., when the computing device goes idle, is booted up, is shut down, and the like).

On the other hand, at block 306, if the data agent 214 determines that the off-line mail data 218 has been modified since the last backup, the routine 300 proceeds to block 308. At block 308, the data agent 214 calculates a score for the off-line mail data 218. In certain embodiments, the score is calculated based on the content of the off-line mail data 218. In one embodiment, the score may be calculated based on the number of nodes in the data structure used to store the off-line mail data 218. For example, if the mail application 212 causes the off-line mail data 218 to be stored in a B-tree, the score may be the number of B-tree nodes in the data structure. In such an example, if a mail item is deleted, the node count (e.g., number of nodes in the data structure) may be decreased by one, resulting in a new score for the off-line mail data 218. However, if one mail item is deleted and another mail item is added, the node count remains unchanged. Thus, where only the number of nodes is used in creating the score, if the same number of mail items are deleted and added, the score will remain unchanged even though the content of the mail data has changed. In some implementations, when a mail item is deleted, the mail application 212 initially updates the node count and schedules the node for deletion at a later point in time, without actually deleting the node corresponding to the deleted mail item at that time. Then, the mail application 212 traverses the data structure and deletes the node corresponding to the deleted mail item at a later time, along with any other nodes scheduled for deletion. In some embodiments, the mail application 212 modifies the node corresponding to the deleted mail item (e.g., adjusts the life expectancy of the node).

In another embodiment, additionally or alternatively, the score may be based on information other than the total number of nodes in the data structure. For example, the score may be based on both the number of nodes and the life expectancy (e.g., expected life, remaining life, etc.) of each of the nodes. For instance, the score may be the sum of the number of nodes and the sum of the life expectancies of each of the nodes. In some implementations, the life expectancy of a node that is stored in association with the node and indicates how long the node is expected to remain in the data structure. The life expectancy of a node may be stored as part of the metadata associated with the off-line mail data 218. Alternatively, the life expectancy of a node may be stored in the data structure along with the node or as part of the node. In one embodiment, the nodes corresponding to newer mail items have higher life expectancy values (or remaining life). For example, if one mail item is removed and another mail item is added, the node corresponding to the newly added mail item has a higher life expectancy compared to the node corresponding to the removed mail item. Thus, the score is changed even though the total number of nodes remains unchanged.

Turning to FIG. 4, an example routine 400 for calculating the score of the off-line mail data 218 is described. The routine 400 is described with respect to the system 200 of FIG. 2. However, one or more of the steps of routine 400 may be implemented by other information management systems, such as those described in greater detail above with reference to FIG. 1D. The routine 400 can be implemented by any one, or a combination of, a client, a storage manager, a data agent, a customized deployment manager, a media agent, and the like. Although the steps in the routine 400 are described as being performed by the data agent 214 of the system 200, the embodiments discussed herein are not limited as such, and the steps in the routine 400 may be performed by other components of the system 200, either alone or in combination.

At block 402, the routine 400 begins. At block 404, the data agent 214 determines the number of nodes in the data structure storing the off-line mail data 218. The number of nodes may be stored as a variable (e.g., node count) in association with the data structure. Alternatively, the number of nodes may be determined (e.g., by traversing the data structure) on the fly as needed.

At block 406, the data agent 214 determines the life expectancy of one or more nodes in the data structure. In one embodiment, the data agent 214 determines the life expectancy of each node in the data structure. In another embodiment, the data agent 214 determines the life expectancies of a subset of the nodes. As discussed above, the life expectancy of a node may be stored in association with each node. Alternatively, the life expectancy of a node may be calculated (e.g., using the data of creation of the node or the mail item corresponding to the node) on the fly as needed.

In some embodiments, the age of the nodes may be used instead of or in addition to the life expectancy of the nodes. For example, the time of creation of each node may be stored as part of or in association with the node, and the data agent 214 may use the time of creation to determine the age of the nodes. The time of creation may correspond to the time that the mail item corresponding to the node is created or received.

At block 408, the data agent 214 calculates a score based on the number of nodes in the data structure and the determined life expectancies of the one more nodes. The formula for calculating the score of the off-line mail data 218 (e.g., a PST file) can be based on any appropriate criteria. In one embodiment, the score is calculated by adding the number of nodes in the data structure storing the off-line mail data 218 to the sum of the life expectancy (LE) of each node (e.g., [(LE of Node #1)+(LE of Node #2)+ . . . +(LE of Node #N)]+N). In another embodiment, the score is calculated by multiplying the sum of the life expectancy of each node by the number of nodes in the off-line mail data structure (e.g., [(LE of Node #1)+(LE of Node #2)+ . . . +(LE of Node #N)]*N). The formula for calculating the score of the off-line mail data 218 is not limited to those discussed herein and can be any formula based on one or more elements derived from the off-line mail data 218. In another example, the score is calculated by averaging the life expectancy of each node and the number of nodes.

In some embodiments, the score comprises two or more values. For example, the score of the off-line mail data 218 may comprise (1) the number of nodes in the data structure storing the off-line mail data 218 and (2) the average life expectancy of all the nodes in the data structure. Although the number of nodes and the life expectancy of the nodes are used in certain embodiments described herein, it should be appreciated that the score of the off-line mail data 218 may be based on any other information or data stored along with or as part of the off-line mail data 218 and/or any sum or product thereof.

Referring back to FIG. 3, at block 310, the data agent 214 compares the score of the off-line mail data 218 with a score associated with the previously backed up copy of the off-line mail data 218. For example, the data agent 214 may retrieve the score stored in association with the previously backed up copy of the off-line mail data 218. In another example, the data agent 214 may calculate the score of the previously stored backup on the fly.

At block 312, the data agent 214 determines whether one or more threshold criteria have been met. For example, one threshold criteria may be that the scores of the current off-line mail data 218 and the previously backed up off-line mail data 218 be different. In such an example, the data agent 214 determines that the threshold criteria is met if the scores are different, and determines that the threshold criteria is not met if the scores are the same. For example, if the previously backed up PST file has a score of 100, and the current PST file has a score of 105, the data agent 214 determines that the criteria is met because the scores are different. In some embodiments, there may be multiple threshold criteria. For example, if the score comprises multiple values, the data agent 214 may compare each value with the corresponding value of the score associated with the previously backed up copy of the off-line mail data 218, and determine that the threshold criteria have been met if none of the values is equal to the corresponding value.

If the data agent 214 determines that one or more threshold criteria have not been met, the routine 300 returns to block 304. In certain examples, although not illustrated in FIG. 3, a period of time (e.g., 20 minutes) is passed before checking whether the off-line mail data 218 has been modified at block 304. In other examples, the data agent 214 checks whether the off-line mail data 218 has been modified after a specified event occurs (e.g., when the computing device goes idle, is booted up, is shut down, and the like).

On the other hand, at block 312, if the data agent 214 determines that all the threshold criteria have been met, the routine 300 proceeds to block 314. At block 314, the data agent 214 backs up the off-line mail data 218. For example, if the data agent 214 determines that all the threshold criteria have been met, the data agent 214 causes the current PST file to be backed up. The backup operation may comprise any of the one or more techniques discussed herein (e.g., full backup, differential backup, incremental backup, and the like) and the backup copy of the off-line mail data 218 may be stored in any format (e.g., a backup format different from the native format of the off-line mail data 218). The routine 300 ends at block 316.

The routine 300 can include fewer, more, or different blocks than those illustrated in FIG. 3 without departing from the spirit and scope of the description. Moreover, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art and others that some or all of the functions described in this disclosure may be embodied in software executed by one or more processors of the disclosed components and mobile communication devices. The software may be persistently stored in any type of non-volatile storage.

Example Data Structure of Off-Line Mail Data

As discussed herein, the off-line mail data 218 may be at least partially stored in a PST file. In some implementations, the PST file is implemented using a tree data structure (e.g., B-tree). The PST file may have a plurality of nodes and leafs. Each of the nodes and leafs may correspond to a mail item (e.g., an email). In one embodiment, the nodes and leafs are 512 bytes. In some implementations, the PST file may be structured in three layers, which comprise a node database (NDB) layer, a lists-tables-properties (LTP) layer, and a messaging layer.

The NDB layer may comprise a database of nodes. For example, the NDB layer may comprise a header, file allocation information, blocks, nodes, and BTrees (e.g., node BTree and block BTree). The node BTree may include references to all nodes in the PST file, and the block BTree may include references to all data blocks in the PST file. A node in the node BTree may include a block ID of the block that contains the data of the node. The block that contains the data of the node can be searched and found in the block BTree using the block ID.

The LTP layer may comprise a property context (PC) and a table context (TC). In one embodiment, the PC is a collection of properties, and the TC is a two-dimensional table having rows and columns, where the rows represent a collection of properties and the columns indicate which properties are within the rows. Each PC or TC may be stored as data in a single node. In some implementations, the LTP layer employs a heap-on-node (HN) data structure and a BTree-on-heap (BTH) data structure.

The messaging layer may comprise higher-level rules that help combine and interpret the structures of the lower layers (e.g., the LTP and NDB layers) as folder objects, message objects, attachment objects, and properties. The message layer may define rules that are applied when modifying the contents of a PST file, such that the modified PST file can be used within existing implementations.

Although some embodiments are described in the context of mail items, other items such as contacts, calendar events, personal notes, or any other data may be stored using similar techniques.

Example File Structure of Off-Line Mail Data

In some implementations, the PST file format may include a header element including metadata regarding the PST file. The header may be found at the beginning of the file. The metadata may comprise one or more of version numbers, checksums, persistent counters, namespace tables, time of creation, time of last modification, a score of the PST file, a node count, or any other characteristic of the PST file. Using this information, an implementation can determine the version and format of the PST file, which determines the layout of the subsequent data in the file. Nodes are used to divide the data in the PST file into logical streams. A node may include a stream of bytes and a collection of subnodes. In one implementation, the PST file uses ANSI. In another implementation, the PST file uses Unicode.

Off-Line Mail Data Backup Policy

In some embodiments, a system administrator and/or individual user may have the capability to specify one or more backup policies or preferences of PST files. For example, an administrator may indicate that the PST file stored on the client computing system 202 is to be backed up at certain intervals (e.g., every 20 minutes, every 2 hours, every 24 hours, etc.) or in connection with certain events (e.g., when the client computing system goes idle, at boot-up, at shutdown, etc.).

In certain embodiments, the administrator may control or manage retention and/or creation of PST files on the client computing device in connection with PST management solutions described herein. For example, the administrator may decide to delete locally-stored PST files once such information has been collected by the storage manager 206. Furthermore, the administrator may dictate that the client computing system 202 may not create PST files in the future. Such administrator control may help ensure comprehensive collection of client data, for example, to assist in legal discovery compliance.

Off-Line Mail Data Management

In some embodiments, the data agent 214 may search for and identify the PST file in the client computing device 202. For example, the client computing device 202 may maintain the off-line mail data 218 in a locally-stored PST file. Such a PST file may contain mail data generated by the mail application 212 executing on the client computing device 202. In certain embodiments, the PST file contains data already stored on the mail server 204 associated with the information management system (e.g., system 200 of FIG. 2), wherein the PST file is at least partially duplicative of such data.

The PST file location information may be readily available to the data agent 214, or the data agent 214 may retrieve the location information from the mail application 212. Once the PST file is located, the data agent 214 may check the last modified time and proceed through the backup process, as described with reference to FIGS. 3 and 4.

Illustrative Examples of Off-Line Mail Data

Now a specific, illustrative example will be provided with reference to FIGS. 5A and 5B. FIG. 5A illustrates an example of backing up the PST file, in which the backup is not performed even though the PST file has been modified since the most recent backup. FIG. 5B illustrates an example of backing up the PST file, in which the backup is performed.

FIG. 5A shows an example diagram 500 including a PST file 502 before a rebalancing operation is performed (e.g., by the Outlook application), and a PST file 508 after the rebalancing operation is performed. In this example, the PST files 502 and 508 represent the same PST file at different instances of time. For example, the PST file 502 may represent the most recently backed up copy of the PST file, and the PST file 508 may represent the current state of the same PST file. As illustrated in FIG. 5A, the mail content of the PST files 502 and 508 are identical (e.g., folder #1 containing messages A and B and folder #2 containing message C). However, due to the rebalancing, the “last modified” metadata 510 of the PST file 508 (e.g., 10:35 AM, Jul. 17, 2014) is different from the “last modified” metadata 504 of the PST file 502 (e.g., 10:01 AM, Jul. 17, 2014). On the other hand, the rebalancing operations did not change the score of the PST file. For example, the score 506 and the score 512 are both 100. In certain embodiments, two PST files having the same score also have the same mail content.

In certain embodiments, the scores 506 and 512 are compared and if they have the same value, no backup of the PST file is performed. As described herein, the PST files may have multiple scores, and such scores may be stored as metadata of the PST files or calculated on the fly before operations involving those scores (e.g., a backup operation) are performed.

FIG. 5B shows an example diagram 520 including a PST file 522 before a new mail is added and a PST file 528 after the new mail is added. In this example, the PST files 522 and 528 represent the same PST file at different instances of time. For example, the PST file 522 may represent the most recently backed up copy of the PST file, and the PST file 528 may represent the current state of the same PST file. In another example, the PST file 522 may correspond to the PST file 508 of FIG. 5A, which is a PST file that has been modified since the most recent backup but is determined not to be backed up. As illustrated in FIG. 5B, the mail content of the PST files 502 and 508 are different (e.g., message D has been added to the PST file 528). The addition of the mail has also changed the “last modified” metadata 530 of the PST file 528. The addition of the mail has also changed the score 532 of the PST file 528 (e.g., 101). In one embodiment, the score 532 is compared to the score 526 of the most recently backed up PST file 522, and since the scores 526 and 532 are different, the PST file 528 is backed up.

As illustrated by FIGS. 5A and 5B, in certain embodiments, whether to back up the PST file is determined based on whether the content of the mail data has actually changed and not whether the PST file has been modified since the most recent backup. In the examples of FIGS. 5A and 5B, scores are used to determine whether the content of the mail data has changed since the most recent backup. However, it should be appreciated that any other metric that may indicate a change in the mail content of the PST file, including those not discussed herein, can be used.

Terminology

Conditional language, such as, among others, “can,” “could,” “might,” or “may,” unless specifically stated otherwise, or otherwise understood within the context as used, is generally intended to convey that certain embodiments include, while other embodiments do not include, certain features, elements and/or steps. Thus, such conditional language is not generally intended to imply that features, elements and/or steps are in any way required for one or more embodiments or that one or more embodiments necessarily include logic for deciding, with or without user input or prompting, whether these features, elements and/or steps are included or are to be performed in any particular embodiment.

Unless the context clearly requires otherwise, throughout the description and the claims, the words “comprise,” “comprising,” and the like are to be construed in an inclusive sense, as opposed to an exclusive or exhaustive sense; that is to say, in the sense of “including, but not limited to.” As used herein, the terms “connected,” “coupled,” or any variant thereof means any connection or coupling, either direct or indirect, between two or more elements; the coupling or connection between the elements can be physical, logical, or a combination thereof. Additionally, the words “herein,” “above,” “below,” and words of similar import, when used in this application, refer to this application as a whole and not to any particular portions of this application. Where the context permits, words in the above Detailed Description using the singular or plural number may also include the plural or singular number respectively. The word “or” in reference to a list of two or more items, covers all of the following interpretations of the word: any one of the items in the list, all of the items in the list, and any combination of the items in the list. Likewise the term “and/or” in reference to a list of two or more items, covers all of the following interpretations of the word: any one of the items in the list, all of the items in the list, and any combination of the items in the list.

Depending on the embodiment, certain operations, acts, events, or functions of any of the algorithms described herein can be performed in a different sequence, can be added, merged, or left out altogether (e.g., not all are necessary for the practice of the algorithms). Moreover, in certain embodiments, operations, acts, functions, or events can be performed concurrently, e.g., through multi-threaded processing, interrupt processing, or multiple processors or processor cores or on other parallel architectures, rather than sequentially.

Systems and modules described herein may comprise software, firmware, hardware, or any combination(s) of software, firmware, or hardware suitable for the purposes described herein. Software and other modules may reside and execute on servers, workstations, personal computers, computerized tablets, PDAs, and other computing devices suitable for the purposes described herein. Software and other modules may be accessible via local memory, via a network, via a browser, or via other means suitable for the purposes described herein. Data structures described herein may comprise computer files, variables, programming arrays, programming structures, or any electronic information storage schemes or methods, or any combinations thereof, suitable for the purposes described herein. User interface elements described herein may comprise elements from graphical user interfaces, interactive voice response, command line interfaces, and other suitable interfaces.

Further, the processing of the various components of the illustrated systems can be distributed across multiple machines, networks, and other computing resources. In addition, two or more components of a system can be combined into fewer components. Various components of the illustrated systems can be implemented in one or more virtual machines, rather than in dedicated computer hardware systems and/or computing devices. Likewise, the data repositories shown can represent physical and/or logical data storage, including, for example, storage area networks or other distributed storage systems. Moreover, in some embodiments the connections between the components shown represent possible paths of data flow, rather than actual connections between hardware. While some examples of possible connections are shown, any of the subset of the components shown can communicate with any other subset of components in various implementations.

Embodiments are also described above with reference to flow chart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus (systems) and computer program products. Each block of the flow chart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in the flow chart illustrations and/or block diagrams, may be implemented by computer program instructions. Such instructions may be provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, specially-equipped computer (e.g., comprising a high-performance database server, a graphics subsystem, etc.) or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via the processor(s) of the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus, create means for implementing the acts specified in the flow chart and/or block diagram block or blocks.

These computer program instructions may also be stored in a non-transitory computer-readable memory that can direct a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to operate in a particular manner, such that the instructions stored in the computer-readable memory produce an article of manufacture including instruction means which implement the acts specified in the flow chart and/or block diagram block or blocks. The computer program instructions may also be loaded onto a computing device or other programmable data processing apparatus to cause a series of operations to be performed on the computing device or other programmable apparatus to produce a computer implemented process such that the instructions which execute on the computer or other programmable apparatus provide steps for implementing the acts specified in the flow chart and/or block diagram block or blocks.

Any patents and applications and other references noted above, including any that may be listed in accompanying filing papers, are incorporated herein by reference. Aspects of the invention can be modified, if necessary, to employ the systems, functions, and concepts of the various references described above to provide yet further implementations of the invention.

These and other changes can be made to the invention in light of the above Detailed Description. While the above description describes certain examples of the invention, and describes the best mode contemplated, no matter how detailed the above appears in text, the invention can be practiced in many ways. Details of the system may vary considerably in its specific implementation, while still being encompassed by the invention disclosed herein. As noted above, particular terminology used when describing certain features or aspects of the invention should not be taken to imply that the terminology is being redefined herein to be restricted to any specific characteristics, features, or aspects of the invention with which that terminology is associated. In general, the terms used in the following claims should not be construed to limit the invention to the specific examples disclosed in the specification, unless the above Detailed Description section explicitly defines such terms. Accordingly, the actual scope of the invention encompasses not only the disclosed examples, but also all equivalent ways of practicing or implementing the invention under the claims.

To reduce the number of claims, certain aspects of the invention are presented below in certain claim forms, but the applicant contemplates the various aspects of the invention in any number of claim forms. For example, while only one aspect of the invention is recited as a means-plus-function claim under 35 U.S.C sec. 112(f) (AIA), other aspects may likewise be embodied as a means-plus-function claim, or in other forms, such as being embodied in a computer-readable medium. Any claims intended to be treated under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f) will begin with the words “means for”, but use of the term “for” in any other context is not intended to invoke treatment under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f). Accordingly, the applicant reserves the right to pursue additional claims after filing this application, in either this application or in a continuing application. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for protecting mail data, the method comprising: processing, in a device comprising computer hardware, a data file stored in one or more primary storage devices in preparation for creation of a secondary copy of the data file in one or more secondary storage devices, the data file containing a plurality of objects; creating a first secondary copy of the data file on the one or more secondary storage devices; determining a first score associated with the first secondary copy, wherein a score is a quantifier of data in a data file; determining whether the data file has been modified since the creation of the first secondary copy; in response to determining that the data file has been modified since the creation of the first secondary copy, calculating a second score based on the data file; determining whether difference between the first and second scores satisfies one or more threshold criteria; and in response to determining that the difference satisfies the one or more threshold criteria, creating a second secondary copy of the data file on the one or more secondary storage devices and storing the second score.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more secondary storage devices comprise specialized computing devices having media agent components installed thereon.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the data file comprises on-line data.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the data file is a Personal Storage Table (PST) file.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein one or more of calculating, comparing, and determining is performed by a client computing device.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein the calculating of the first score comprises one of calculating the first score at least in part based on the first secondary copy, or retrieving the first score stored in association with the first secondary copy.
 7. The method of claim 1 wherein the first score or the second score is based at least in part on one or more of (i) a number of nodes in the data file; (ii) a life expectancy of one or more nodes in the data file; and (iii) an age of one or more nodes.
 8. The method of claim 7, wherein each node corresponds to one of the plurality of objects.
 9. The method of claim 1, wherein the first score or the second score comprises two or more values.
 10. The system of claim 1, wherein preferences for processing the data file are stored in storage policy residing on a storage manager that manages storage of secondary copies on the one or more secondary storage devices.
 11. A system for protecting data, the system comprising: a computing device comprising computer hardware and configured to process a data file stored in one or more primary storage devices in preparation for creation of a secondary copy of the data file in one or more secondary storage devices, the data file containing a plurality of objects; one or more secondary storage computing devices comprising computer hardware and configured to create secondary copies of data in the one or more secondary storage devices; one or more computing devices comprising computer hardware and including a protection manager, the protection manager configured to: determine whether the data file has been modified since the creation of the first secondary copy; determine a first score associated with the first secondary copy, wherein a score is a quantifier of data in a data file; determine whether the data file has been modified since the creation of the first secondary copy; in response to determination that the data file has been modified since the creation of the first secondary copy, calculate a second score based on the data file; determine whether difference between the first and second scores satisfies one or more threshold criteria; and in response to determination that the difference satisfies the one or more threshold criteria, create a second secondary copy of the data file on the one or more secondary storage devices and storing the second score.
 12. The system of claim 11, wherein preferences for processing the data file are stored in storage policy residing on a storage manager that manages storage of secondary copies on the one or more secondary storage devices.
 13. The system of claim 12, wherein the one or more secondary storage computing devices comprise specialized computing devices having media agent components installed thereon.
 14. The system of claim 11, wherein the data file comprises on-line data.
 15. The system of claim 11, wherein a client computing device is configured to perform one or more of said calculating, comparing, and determining.
 16. The system of claim 11, wherein the protection manager is further configured to cause the second score to be stored in association with the second secondary copy.
 17. The system of claim 11, wherein the protection manager is configured to determine the first score by performing one of calculating the first score at least in part based on the first secondary copy and retrieving the first score stored in association with the first secondary copy.
 18. The system of claim 11, wherein the first score or the second score is based at least in part on one or more of (i) a number of nodes in the data file; (ii) a life expectancy of one or more nodes in the data file; and (iii) an age of one or more nodes.
 19. The system of claim 11, wherein the first score or the second score comprises two or more values.
 20. The system of claim 11, wherein the data file is a Personal Storage Table (PST) f 